New Zealand’s state backed aerospace venture is looking overseas for the money to build the country’s second rocket launch site, after the government made clear it has no more capital to put in.
Tāwhaki, the joint venture that runs the National Aerospace Centre at Kaitorete Spit south of Christchurch, says several European companies are interested in backing a spaceport on the site. Acting chief executive John Holt told RNZ the plans “just need commercial ignition”.
Holt said he expected overseas investment could put a rocket test pad on the ground within two years. He has just returned from Europe and travels to the United States this week to keep talking to potential backers. There were “less than five” seriously interested parties, he said, and he would not name them.
“There is a lot more intensity around vertical launch services” than a year ago, Holt told RNZ, adding that “a significant number of new people to talk to … have come to us”.
“There’s never been a more open time,” he said. “We’re as close as somebody giving us the commercial basis to push ‘go’ on a build.”
That is a marked change of tone for a site that has spent much of the past two years looking like a stranded asset. Tāwhaki was pushed away from rockets about 18 months ago at the government’s direction because it could not find customers, and shifted its focus to advanced aviation, which covers drones, uncrewed aircraft and other new flying machines. Holt said it is now pivoting back to pursue both, because commercial and defence demand has picked up sharply and the two are increasingly the same customers.
The obstacle is money. Official briefings to Space Minister Chris Penk, released under the Official Information Act and reported by RNZ, said New Zealand does not fund a space programme the way many of its competitors do, and that support for space research and development has been “ad hoc”. One briefing from April said other countries are “actively subsidising launch development and offering the use of fully developed spaceports to attract operators, incentives New Zealand is not well positioned to match”. It went on to say it was likely some government co-investment would be expected by any vertical launch operator considering setting up at Tāwhaki.
Another briefing put the position bluntly, saying “the fiscal context suggests that the Crown will be unlikely to provide more investment at the moment”, while a second noted “there is an immediate need for capital investment to support operations and growth”.
Penk told RNZ government support for Tāwhaki had already been substantial, with $35 million put in since 2021. He pointed instead to regulatory changes as the government’s contribution, saying moves to streamline aerospace rules “will give New Zealand a competitive advantage internationally”. The site has also been granted a permanent Special Use Airspace zone, which makes testing easier to schedule. Separately, the government lifted the cap on rocket launches written into law from 100 to 1000, and halved the time officials and intelligence agencies take to approve satellite payloads from 11 weeks to five and a half.
What has changed on the demand side is partly defence. A June briefing on Tāwhaki said the New Zealand aerospace sector “has increasingly pivoted to meet rising defence demands, both domestically and internationally”, pointing to a recent Dawn Aerospace radar tracking demonstration run with the New Zealand navy at the site.
Holt said the board was expected to confirm a policy on Friday covering dual use activity, meaning work with both civilian and military applications, including where it would draw the line on launches that might put offensive weapons into orbit. “We have boundaries to what it is we would look at doing and what we would not do,” he said.
“It’s a trillion-dollar market and we think that we can find that sliver of that market which is great for the New Zealand economy and growing all our aerospace ambitions that also sits alongside our values.”
The commercial pull is real enough. Amazon’s Project Kuiper is seeking United States approval to launch 5000 satellites from 2028 using multiple launch providers, and militaries in several countries are buying the ability to replace satellites quickly if they are knocked out. New Zealand has joined NATO’s STARLIFT programme as an observer. Holt said resilience and rapid turnaround were now big drivers, and that Tāwhaki’s geography gave it something to sell to European operators who want launch options well away from home. One June briefing said Tāwhaki “considers itself a strong long-term candidate for supporting European vertical launch requirements”.
For a sense of the scale on offer, Holt pointed to Canada, where a military led deal worth CA$200 million over 10 years to lease a spaceport in Nova Scotia was announced in March.
The risk is equally real. Britain’s spaceport push has been set back since 2024 by a rocket exploding during a test and by two launch companies collapsing, and Lockheed Martin walked away from launch attempts in the Shetland Islands despite large government subsidies. Building a pad does not guarantee anyone turns up to use it.
New Zealand’s only working spaceport remains Rocket Lab’s site at Mahia, which is busy enough that the country ranked third equal with Russia for total launches last year. Kaitorete Spit has a 1000 metre sealed runway and a hangar, and a strip of land about 25 kilometres long and three kilometres wide, but so far only a handful of advanced aviation companies use it.
The prize the government keeps pointing at is a sector that is already sizeable. An MBIE report released in May 2025 put space sector revenue at $2.47 billion in the 2023 and 2024 financial year, with advanced aviation adding another $480 million, and counted 17,000 jobs across the space sector, up from 12,000 in 2019. Whether a second launch site adds to that number, or becomes an expensive concrete pad on a windswept spit, now rests on a handful of unnamed European companies.
Should the government put more money into a second launch site, or is it right to wait for private investors to move first? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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