Manuel Serrano, consejero delegado de OCCAM

This is a special day as we inaugurate the facilities and honor everyone who helped us on our journey. We celebrate three years, a short but intense period, even exhausting. Without the immense help from multiple entities, companies, and especially our family who supported us through every setback, it would have been impossible.

Ocam, beyond its nod to simplicity, is basically the response to an internal need we had as a group of engineers to do things right. We believed things could be done differently, and that the market would appreciate a different know-how or approach. We were convinced of it. This adventure was conceived post-pandemic. During the pandemic, the partners would sit anywhere, using meals as an excuse, and defined on a napkin the idea that brings us here today. That napkin turned into a patent, covering practically all the systems we will show, allowing us to scale quickly to different solutions.

With that patent, we funded ourselves, though not with much money. Before taking on debt, we wanted to test with a prototype. We defined a prototype in just four months, from blank paper to a product. Thanks to the help of some incredible professionals who decided to take a leap, burn the bridges, and join us, convinced that another way of doing things was possible. We made a prototype, and after testing it, we were amazed. We took it under our arm and traveled across the United States to different companies. That's when we confirmed we really had a company, as the reactions from clients and people were incredible.

That's where it all began. After that, other partners trusted us with the development of tooling, primary structures, and separation actuators for important satellites like UPEMESAT. Various actors coincided in time, and we were lucky they aligned as we were running out of money. But that left us in a situation where we were literally in a 15-square-meter attic booth, without even a local office or garage. There, Carlos Tero, along with Madrid Mäd and tremendous support, gave us a small office and laboratory of barely 40 square meters, where we could send the first structures and tooling for 2.5-ton satellites for some of the companies here, allowing us to establish ourselves.

From there, one after another, until another partner came and said, 'I need not just tooling or structure, but an actuator, a solution to pyrotechnics. Can you develop something resettable and a real alternative that I can't find in the market?' And obviously, with little money, we said, 'Why not? Of course we can do that.' We developed an actuator that later became the seed for several projects, with which stage separation systems for three launchers and fairing openings are being tested. As I said, it was the seed, and with market interest and real need, we gained the support of the European Space Agency, allowing us to qualify them. We are finishing qualification, already have flight contracts even without qualified actuators, and we are functioning, producing in series.

After that, we gained the trust of some key people. The case of PLD, we saw the opportunity to fill a small launcher, like the model we see here. This would be the highest expression of Ocam, with various separation systems for small satellites, CubeSats, and filling a small dispenser. Nothing like our friends at Airbus, but it seems nice in modesty. From there, we allied with Airbus, secured a consortium, and the support of the Spanish Space Agency, which trusted us with a project for constellation separation systems in an unthinkable consortium with Airbus and Poxi a few months earlier. The agency trusted us for this project, and we are industrializing for mass production of multiple hundreds of actuators. Hopefully, it reaches a good port. As I said, along the way, multiple supports: Esavic trusted and backed us, confirming the project worked; Madrid Mäd, the Spanish Space Agency. The support has been immense everywhere, and without it, we wouldn't have made it here.

Today, we can confirm that we are providing separation systems for three constellations and working with four different launchers for various types of fairings and solutions. If nothing goes wrong and flights aren't delayed, by the end of this year, we expect about twenty of our devices of different types, which we will show, to be flying on four different launchers. For us, it's a milestone and a barrier that was not long ago unthinkable to break, unthinkable that anyone would trust us without something qualified. And what we've realized is that the trust isn't in a startup or Ocam, but in the 25 professionals we have today, who I dare say are the best in the industry. We're not Real Madrid or Barcelona, but we've managed to attract the Messi, Mbappé, and Cristiano Ronaldo of this field, and it's a pleasure to have them all with us today.

There's little more to say. It's been three exhausting years, impossible without everyone's support and our partners, and it's a joy to share this day with you as we inaugurate these facilities.