Crabtree takes helm at Zenno
The former head of the New Zealand Space Agency, Peter Crabtree, is now the chair of Auckland space tech startup, Zenno Astronautics.
Founded in 2017, Zenno recently raised $10.5 million in a seed funding round to help the firm take its technology into orbit to show it works.
Crabtree told Businessdesk he was excited to join the company and work with founder and chief executive Max Arshavsky, whom he met when Zenno was still in its earliest stages.
“My first observation is just how far they’ve come along in such a short period of time. At this point, it’s a milestone with the seed round with a significant amount of capital coming into the business.”
Zenno’s technology allows satellites to move in space and recognise other satellites using a highly efficient form of magnetic field generation.
Crabtree left his government job last August after close to nine years of working for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
He held several roles during his time with MBIE, including general manager of science and innovation, chair of the Covid-19 vaccines taskforce, and head of the space agency, which he helped found in 2016.
Since leaving, he had worked with private investors to identify opportunities in NZ, as well as being director of biotechnology firm Bioora.
He said the transition from public to private while remaining in the same sector is common the West.
He said his time with MBIE had been useful when it came to working with tech businesses and investors, especially in the space industry.
“A hell of a lot of what you do in a space company is interacting with governments in one way or another; this is in an international context.”
Watching rockets escape the atmosphere might be what captures the imagination, and Rocket Lab had been great as a tool for boosting the reputation of NZ’S space sector, said Crabtree, but the real growth in the space industry is in the supporting technologies, such as Zenno’s magnet-based manoeuvring or the University of Canterbury’s cis-lunar space monitoring tech.
“The launch segment of the space sector is a very small sliver of it.”
Crabtree said he’s looking forward to seeing the continued growth of the space tech industry in New Zealand and the benefits that it’ll bring to the country, such as more high-skill, highwage jobs.