Rocket Lab buys SailGP’s Warkworth plant, takes on 50 staff, as Sir Russell Coutts’ outfit decamps for UK

Rocket Lab is taking over SailGP Technologies’ 6500sq m (70,000 sq ft) development and manufacturing complex in Warkworth - along with 50 staff who work in the facility.

SailGP is relocating its manufacturing to Southampton on England’s south coast, with a transition between April and November this year, to be closer to the competition’s global HQ in London. The majority of races for the Sir Russell Coutts and Larry Ellison-founded competition are in the Northern Hemisphere, too.

Founded in 2001 as Core Builders Composites (CBC), the Warkworth facility, once made America’s Cup boats for Ellison’s Oracle Team USA. In more recent years it has become heavily focused on building and maintaining the cutting-edge F50 catamarans used in SailGP’s global racing league - which has also grown to account for around 80 per cent of its work.

The Warkworth facility has also been supplying Rocket Lab.

“We’ve had the privilege of working with the SailGP Technologies team for a number of years now supporting advanced carbon composite manufacturing for Electron,” Rocket Lab CEO and founder Peter Beck said.

Beck’s firm will keep on 90 per cent of Sail GP’s staff. The 50 SailGP staff pictured below (with a few Rocket Lab employees sprinkled in) will join Rocket Lab this week.

Rocket Lab will also retain the Warkworth plant’s high-tech manufacturing gear, including autoclave vacuum ovens and computer numerical control (CNC) machinery - or industrial-scale 3D printers that can handle metal and composites. The new kit will be used, in part, to accelerate R&D work on its much larger, crew-capable Neutron rocket, due for its maiden launch late next year.

Around 50 SailGP Technologies NZ staff will join Rocket Lab as the Kiwi-American firm takes over its 6500sq m Warkworth manufacturing facility.

Neither side put a dollar value on the deal. The Warkworth plant has a capital value of $5.8 million.

Access to the Woodcocks Rd site should be made easier by the recently completed, $880m Pūhoi to Warkworth motorway.

The 50 staff taken onboard from SailGP will boost Rocket Lab’s New Zealand workforce to around 730, communications director Morgan Bailey says.

Following a string of acquisitions in the US, the Kiwi-American firm now employs around 1650.

Rocket Lab has been in rapid expansion mode as it gears up for Neutron, which will be capable of lifting a 13,000kg payload into orbit (compared to around 300kg for the Electron it uses today). The firm will charge US$50m-55m per Neutron launch, compared to US$7.5m for its current rocket.

In May last year, Rocket Lab paid US$16m for assets of the failed Virgin Orbit, including its 13,378sq m headquarters and manufacturing centre in Long Beach, California - which neighbours Rocket Lab’s own HQ.

Rocket Lab is also constructing a Neutron manufacturing complex, mission control and launchpad in Virginia, and last year it leased a 92,903sq m (1 million sq ft) facility within Nasa’s Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, which will be used for Neutron testing.

The firm has also been expanding in Auckland, with a new plant for making satellite components.

Chris Keall is an Auckland-based member of the Herald’s business team. He joined the Herald in 2018 and is the technology editor and a senior business writer.