SAC-27-010 International Engagement Requirement

The Satellite Applications Catapult (the Catapult) is seeking to identify organisations with the capacity, expertise, and relevant international experience to support the development and delivery of its international engagement. The requirement is expected to focus on strengthening market insight, market push and priority country selection, overseas partner development, routes to market for UK companies, and practical implementation planning. The Catapult is particularly interested in hearing from organisations that can provide one or more of the following capabilities: International strategy, trade, and market-entry expertise: Organisations with experience helping technology, innovation, space, defence, or advanced engineering businesses understand overseas markets, identify routes to market, assess commercial demand, and prioritise countries based on evidence of opportunity and accessibility. Space sector or technology commercialisation and development expertise: Organisations with a strong understanding of the space sector, space-enabled applications, innovation ecosystems, regional trade bodies, economic development organisations, and the role these networks can play in supporting business growth. Market intelligence and company segmentation capability: Organisations able to assess different types of UK space businesses, including upstream, downstream, in-orbit services, communications, connectivity, ground segment, and space-enabled application companies, and identify which international markets are most relevant to each type of business. Export, inward investment, and international business support experience: Organisations with experience supporting export development, international partnerships, soft-landing activity, inward investment qualification, business matchmaking, overseas missions, or engagement with public-sector trade and investment mechanisms. International partner identification and relationship brokerage capability: Organisations with established knowledge of overseas partner networks, including trade agencies, economic development bodies, innovation agencies, overseas clusters, accelerators, anchor corporates, public buyers, systems integrators, research organisations, and relevant government or public-sector routes. Competitive risk, retention, and ecosystem analysis expertise: Organisations able to assess where overseas ecosystems may present competitive risks to the UK space sector, including risks linked to business relocation, talent attraction, acquisition, intellectual property movement, investment pull, supply chain dependency, or capability leakage. The Catapult expects that suitable suppliers may include specialist international trade consultancies, space sector advisory firms, economic development and investment promotion specialists, innovation ecosystem organisations, cluster development experts, technology commercialisation advisers, market intelligence providers, or organisations with demonstrable experience supporting high-growth technology businesses into overseas markets. We anticipate that this will be a below threshold requirement and any RFQ/s will be structured to allow organisations to bid for specific areas of the requirement where they can demonstrate relevant expertise, or to bid for an integrated programme where they can deliver the full scope.