Maritime Launch Services, a six-year-old startup looking to operate Canada’s first commercial spaceport and offer low Earth orbit launch services via the Ukrainian Cyclone-4M system, has taken another step toward becoming a publicly traded company in Canada after a reverse merger with an investment group.
Merchant bank Jaguar Financial on April 1 closed its previously announced reverse takeover transaction with then-privately held Maritime Launch Services and took on the latter’s name. The dealmaking grossed the latter around $7 million.
The company is a reporting issuer under the securities laws of the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. It has received conditional listing approval from Neo Exchange, a Canadian stock exchange based in Toronto. No further updates will be given, according to a Canadian securities filing, and the company said only that common shares will begin trading “in due course” once conditions are satisfied. The securities will not be registered directly in the U.S.
Maritime Launch is developing Spaceport Nova Scotia and is working with Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, developers of the Cyclone-4M payload delivery system. However, the Ukrainian companies have found themselves on the front lines of the recent Russian invasion of their country, with their home city of Dnipro under attack.
Maritime Launch has announced support for Ukraine and its suppliers’ workers in the country, but nothing regarding the war’s effects on its business plan. In December 2021, Maritime Launch said construction on the spaceport near Canso, Nova Scotia, was to begin in the “coming months,” with first launch slated for 2023. Ultimately, the company expects a launch tempo of eight missions a year.
Last November, Maritime Launch announced its first payload services customer, Nanoracks, a Voyager Space company in the U.S. known as an early innovator of International Space Station (ISS) commercial efforts. Maritime Launch also signed a letter of intent to launch with Nova Scotia-based Galaxia Mission Systems, an aerospace company that will deploy small satellites aboard the spaceport’s first flight.
Along with the reverse merger news, Maritime Launch unveiled its top management. Stephen Matier, the entrepreneur and career aerospace executive behind the startup, is CEO and president. Keith Abriel is CFO.
