The Spanish launch firm says it is the first private operator to commit capital at this scale to the historic Guiana spaceport, with a first MIURA 5 flight still slated for 2026.
PLD Space is putting €35m into the launch complex it is building at the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, the Spanish company announced on Monday at the Choose France event in Versailles.
The figure covers development and deployment of the site over the 2025 to 2026 period, and the company says it makes PLD Space the first private operator to commit capital expenditure at this scale to the ELM-Diamant site at Europe’s historic spaceport.
Most of the money stays in France. Of the €35m total, €22m is being spent within the French industrial ecosystem, with €13m allocated directly to more than 20 companies based in French Guiana, including, the company says, a significant number of small and medium-sized firms.
Applying official INSEE multipliers for the territory’s space sector, PLD Space expects the investment to generate roughly €21m in local value added and to sustain between 250 and 275 indirect and induced jobs during the construction phase, alongside a projected 35 direct jobs tied to future recurring launch operations.
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The complex is for MIURA 5, PLD Space’s orbital launcher. Civil works are now in their final phase, with completion expected by summer 2026, according to the company.
Launch infrastructure built in parallel in Spain is being completed and is starting to be shipped to Kourou, where the operational complex is being developed for the MIURA 5 vehicle in collaboration with the French space agency CNES. PLD Space says it remains on track for a first MIURA 5 launch from the Guiana Space Centre in 2026.
The framing throughout is sovereignty. PLD Space casts the Kourou build-out as a way to let European institutional and commercial payloads launch from European soil aboard a European launcher, language that echoes the priorities of France and the European Space Agency to widen the industrial base of a spaceport long dominated by established players.
“This investment represents a major milestone for PLD Space and for Europe’s emerging commercial launch ecosystem,” said Ezequiel Sánchez, the company’s executive president.
Developing its own infrastructure at the Guiana Space Centre, he said, strengthens Europe’s autonomous access to space while contributing to the industrial diversification of the site, and reflects “our long-term commitment to building scalable, competitive and sovereign launch capabilities from Europe.”
Founded in Elche in 2011 by Raúl Torres and Raúl Verdú, PLD Space now employs more than 450 people and operates across facilities in Elche, Teruel, Kourou and Duqm in Oman. Its product line runs from the MIURA family of launchers to the LINCE crewed capsule, and it operates more than 188,000 square metres of facilities across those four sites.
PLD Space describes itself as a vertically integrated launch firm, handling the engineering, testing, manufacturing and operations of its reusable rockets in-house, and frames the MIURA launchers and LINCE capsule as positioning it as a benchmark for European technological sovereignty in space transport. The company did not break down the timing of the €35m beyond the 2025 to 2026 window, nor specify the share of the spend already committed.
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