If you have not already seen it, we have just published our latest survey of the industry. The 2015 survey follows our first one made that 2 years that takes a comprehensive look at the state of the EO services sector in Europe and Canada. The results are very detailed and provide a very effective basis on which we can develop our messages to policy makers concerning their decisions where they impact on the sector.

Probably the strongest message is that the sector is growing strongly. All the basic measures of employment, revenues and the number of companies are growing at between 8-10% per annum. This has been relatively steady since the first survey was conducted in 2006 (not by EARSC) although there are some signs that the rate may have slowed after a burst between 2008 and 2011 caused by the creation of several new satellite operators with new satellites launched around that time. From the recent survey, the growth has been picked up in the value-added services part of the sector which has grown to generate 50% of the total sector revenues. The total revenues in 2014 were €911m.

Similarly, the number of employees has grown from just under 6000 in 2012 to nearly 6811 in 2014 and the number of companies from 389 in 2012 to 451 in 2014.

The report available on our web-site is packed with charts and figures and there will shortly be an even longer report with even more data contained in it. We are also asked to carry out further analysis on specific matters using the data which we have collected and we are happy to do this. We are currently deepening our understanding of the Dutch sector and hope to be able to support studies into other countries in Europe.

As a further step, we shall start to look at some regions outside Europe and will be happy to explore this further with local organisations. If we can develop consistent and comparable data sets for the industry around the world then we can all get a better view of how our sector is evolving. I'll try to write further on specific topics in future blogs.