Space Coast gets new player in satellite manufacturing business

Richard Tribou, Orlando Sentinel on Apr 8, 2026

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Florida has been enticing companies in recent years to consider the state not just for launching their space hardware, but for building it.

An Italian space company has heard the call and opened its first U.S.-based satellite production site on the Space Coast last week.

Argotec, headquartered in Turin, Italy, but with offices in Germany and the U.S., cut the ribbon on a $25 million site in Melbourne to produce small satellites.

The 5,400-square-foot facility includes offices and an integration and clean room as well as warehouse space. The company looks to produce up to 10 satellites per month.

“The opening of our Florida facility marks a major step in Argotec’s growth and international expansion,” said CEO and company founder David Avino. “The U.S. is the world’s most dynamic and strategically important space market and expanding our presence here means being closer to the demand, speed and scale that are shaping the future of the industry.”

The venture in Brevard is already operating with 14 Florida-based employees and several others across the U.S. assigned to work with it. Plans are to double its employment this year, though, and triple within the next two years. The company stated salaries are competitive for the high-paying engineering jobs around the region, including an 8% match on 401k retirement plans.

“This is exactly the kind of investment that keeps Florida’s Space Coast at the center of America’s space industry,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Haridopolos, who attended the ceremony last Thursday. “Argotec’s new facility brings cutting-edge technology, high-skilled jobs, and faster satellite production — strengthening both our national security and commercial capabilities.”

The state has brought in a lot of aerospace manufacturing in the last decade, including Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket and Blue Moon lunar lander production plants in Merritt Island and SpaceX’s in-development Starship rocket plant at Kennedy Space Center.

Several years ago, Florida thought it had landed a manufacturing cash cow when Boca Raton-based Terran Orbital announced it planned to build a massive factory on the Space Coast that would have created 2,100 high-paying jobs. The event was announced by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said it would have added $300 million boost to the regional economy. But that deal fell through.

Amazon, though, has built out in phases a $140 million, 142,000-square-foot satellite processing facility in the same location on a parcel at KSC leased by Space Florida, the state’s aerospace finance and development authority. While those satellites for Amazon’s Project Leo constellation, a competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, are built outside the state, they get the final fueling and preparation for launch in Florida.

It meant at least 50 high paying jobs, which softened the blow of losing out on the Terran Orbital plan.

That smaller approach of aerospace manufacturing has added to the state’s economic bottom line. Space Florida reported that by the end of 2025 with more than 220 aerospace projects in the works that are projected to bring $6 billion to the state in the coming years.

“What’s happening in Florida is the power of partnership at scale,” said Space Florida President and CEO, retired Col. Rob Long, earlier this year. “We’ve built an ecosystem where industry can move faster, invest with confidence and grow for the long term.”

Argotec brings a pedigree of previous mission success to the state, having been involved with a microsatellite that flew along and captured images of the deep-space NASA mission DART that was used to impact an asteroid. It also flew a satellite called ArgoMoon as a ride-along payload that successfully deployed after launch on the Artemis I mission in 2022.

One of its current projects is a high elliptical orbit satellite constellation for Earth observation of solar storms and space weather. The Melbourne site will help build satellites of similar caliber.

“This Florida facility positions Argotec U.S. to play a strategic role in the United States space sector,” said Corbett Hoenninger, the company’s general manager for U.S. operations. “We bring a unique combination of advanced know-how, flexible production and innovation, enabling us to support high-priority defense, commercial and scientific programs.”

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