A Scottish Rocket Company Was Weeks From Its First Launch. Then 150 Jobs Went in a Single Week.
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
In short. Orbex, a Forres, Moray-based space rocket manufacturer, had Chad Griffin, Geoffrey Rowley and Graham Smith of FRP Advisory appointed joint administrators on 18 February 2026, confirmed by a London Gazette notice [1]. The company's own statement a week earlier put 150 UK-based employees at risk of redundancy as insolvency proceedings began [2]; most of those roles were confirmed lost on administration [3]. Graded REPORTED, status departed. This ledger is logging the event nine months after it happened.
A company that said it was close, then was gone
A month before it collapsed, Orbex was telling the public it was "on the cusp" of the first test launches of Prime, its small orbital rocket, built using 3D-printed engines at its Forres factory [2]. On 11 February 2026, the company said fundraising, merger and acquisition efforts had "all concluded unsuccessfully," and filed notice of intent to appoint administrators; a planned acquisition by The Exploration Company had fallen through [2]. That same statement put 150 UK-based employees at risk of redundancy [2].
A week later, administrators were formally appointed, confirmed by a Gazette notice naming the High Court case directly [1]. Within days, STV and other outlets reported the majority of Orbex's total group workforce, 163 people, had been made redundant, with only a handful kept on to manage the wind-down [3]. This ledger logs 150 as the UK figure, the number the company itself put at risk before administration, distinct from the larger 163 group total, which includes staff who were not UK-based.
Two closures, not one, and a number that is not the whole story
There is a second number in this story that does not belong in a UK jobs ledger but is worth stating plainly: on 20 January 2026, weeks before the UK collapse, Orbex had already made 90 employees redundant when it shut its Danish factory [2]. That is a separate event, in a different country, and it is not counted here. Conflating it with the Forres figure would overstate the UK loss; keeping it out risks understating how much trouble the company was already in before its UK operation went the same way. Both things are true: Orbex was already shedding jobs abroad in January, and its UK workforce followed in February.
The reason given throughout is financial: a "scale-up funding gap" in capital-intensive rocket development, in the words of chief executive Phil Chambers, and a failed search for an institutional backer or buyer [3]. AI is not mentioned anywhere in the coverage checked for this piece.
How the ledger logs it
Graded REPORTED: a London Gazette notice confirms the administration event itself, the highest sourcing bar this ledger applies, with the 150 UK figure sourced to the company's own pre-administration statement and the subsequent redundancy confirmed by press. Status departed: the redundancies were executed on administration, not a pending consultation. This is the fourth backfilled discovery gap logged on this ledger inside two weeks, after Agetur, Merit Holdings and Unimetals Recycling, each surfaced by deliberately sweeping official notices rather than daily news search; a nine-month-old gap is the newest and most direct evidence yet that this sweep needs to keep running, not just the daily one.
Sources
- The Gazette, "Appointment of Administrators: Orbital Express Launch Limited," notice 5064374, published 26 February 2026. https://www.thegazette.co.uk/notice/5064374
- European Spaceflight, "Orbex fails after planned purchase falls through," 11 February 2026. https://europeanspaceflight.com/orbex-fails-after-planned-purchase-falls-through/
- STV News, "Scots space rocket Orbex company enters administration," 19 February 2026. https://news.stv.tv/north/scots-space-rocket-orbex-company-enters-administration