Space technology

This project achieves several economic advantages for the Northern Territory:

Firstly, Aliena has become a corporate member of the Darwin Innovation Hub and its founder Dr Mark Lim has provided mentoring services as its Space Expert in Residence committing to support projects and strategies that build space industry collaboration between Singapore and the Northern Territory. This collaboration is specifically looking at payload and launching opportunities through the proposed Arnhem Space Port project and satellite tracking and technology opportunities in central Australia.

Secondly, this project has also resulted in a commitment between Darwin Innovation Hub and Capvista to collaborate to develop a space industry acceleration program. We hope to work with such organisations as the National Research Foundation of Singapore to develop this platform that we hope could potentially be led by Singapore and partnered by the Darwin Innovation Hub identifying valuable customers and project proponents both jurisdictions could benefit from.

Thirdly, this project now cements a meaningful relationship with Nanyang Technological University and todays deal will hopefully not be our last. Darwin Innovation Hub genuinely sees Nanyang as a valuable source of future technologies we would love to develop in the Northern Territory in fields of research ranging from med tech, ag tech, artificial intelligence and advanced manufacturing. It is our hope that some of our future projects will provide Charles Darwin University the opportunity to participate in joint research projects which no doubt will assist CDU builds its rankings and its ability to source research income through our venture capital investment which can be leveraged against Australian Government grant funding.

Finally, it also goes without saying that this project provides our resident venture capital fund, which is a member of the Australian Investment Council the privilege to co-invest alongside Cap Vista and 500 start-ups a leading venture capital investor based in the United States in to a company that has a first class technology and massive future addressable market.

We would like to acknowledge the role that both Austrade and the Northern Territory Government has played in enabling the Darwin Innovation Hub to achieve this goal. The NTG is a Foundation Partner of the DIH and has also played a valuable role developing our relationships with Nanyang Technological University and Capvista through its investment attraction team based in Singapore.

We would like to thank the Chief Minister Gunner and Austrade for their team’s professionalism and support throughout this process. In the end, DIH can add great value and influence through mentorship and arranging direct private capital investment, but without the Government support, its introductions and stamp of approval, our job simply becomes a lot harder to do.