On Monday, American Pacific Corporation, a Cedar City, Utah company that makes propulsion-related materials for the Aerospace, Space, Defense and Fire Protection industries, announced that it is buying a minority stake in Frontier Aerospace, a Simi Valley, California company that has rapidly become a leading developer of space propulsion technologies. Price and other deal terms were not made public.
The Frontier Aerospace deal marks American Pacific’s first investment since it was acquired by AE Industrial Partners, LP in 2020. AEI is a private equity firm specializing in Aerospace/Space and Defense, as well as Power Generation and Specialty Industrial markets.
Frontier was founded in 1997 by President Jim McKinnon, previously a propulsion research engineer at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, under a Small Business Innovation Research contract for the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. Since then, the company has pivoted into the propulsion space, developing geostationary orbit and deep space systems for NASA. Today, Frontier provides end-to-end space propulsion services, from concept ideation to product development to design verification testing.
Frontier has a reputation for handling complex projects that can benefit from its industry experience, resources, and partnerships. Its products are used in defense, GEO/deep space applications, lunar landers, collision avoidance, space transportation, space tourism and earth observation satellites. In February, Frontier announced that its propulsion systems have been slated for two lunar landers, Griffin and Peregrine, as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) mission.
“With our investment in Frontier, we now have a strategic partner in next-generation, in-space liquid propulsion technology,” said Hal Murdock, CEO of American Pacific. “Jim and the Frontier team bring a strong space heritage and have a solid reputation for innovation, and we are proud to work together to better serve our launch industry customers.”
“With American Pacific’s investment, we gain additional resources to take advantage of the tremendous interest in today’s space industry, combined with the added benefit of their deep defense industry expertise,” said Frontier’s McKinnon. “We also look forward to leveraging AEI’s relationships and intimate understanding of aerospace and defense’s unique challenges.”
“Guidance navigation and control and in-space propulsion are critical to the national defense and space industries, and we are pleased to have American Pacific partner with a company on the cutting edge of next-generation liquid propulsion technologies,” said Kirk Konert, a Partner at AEI. “We’re excited about the possibilities that a partnership between two well-respected leaders can offer.”
Late last week, space venture capital firm Space Capital released its quarterly review of space-related investment for Q1 of 2021. Space Capital’s analysis found that $4.5 billion was newly invested into 77 space companies during the quarter, while investors liquidated $6.8 billion of investments across 14 space company exits (mostly due to acquisitions and IPO’s from space tech application companies). Over the past decade, Space Capital reports, investors have committed nearly $187 billion in close 1,500 companies.
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