Enac, the Puglia Region and Aeroporti di Puglia (the public company that manages the airports) have initiated actions to establish the legal entity that will deal with the Grottaglie (Taranto) spaceport, currently the only one in Italy. The new entity will be called “Criptaliae Spaceport” – from the ancient name of Grottaglie – and will put Enac, Enav, Aeroporti di Puglia and the Military Aviation Authority in a position to intercept “the demand for innovative services of the aerospace sector of a public and private », as stated in the note from Aeroporti di Puglia. Everything will have a central (Government and ENAC) and local (Puglia Region) institutional framework.
In the aerospace sector, the infrastructure was recognized by the ENAC in 2014 and by the Ministry of Infrastructure in 2018. And a few days ago it was presented at the Farnborough International Airshow in the United Kingdom. Enac and AdP are already working on the preliminary activities for the design of the necessary works. An international call will be launched.
At the airport, adjustments have been made for 11 million and further improvements are planned for another 11 million. The president of ENAC, Pierluigi Di Palma, the number one of AdP, Antonio Maria Vasile, and the regional governor of Puglia, Michele Emiliano, declared that Grottaglie will not be just a spaceport “for the national strategic development of autonomous access to space (flights suborbital, aircraft, returns to the base of space operations, etc.), but also “Aeronautical Test Bed” for the development, testing and certification of industrial and scientific research projects in the aeronautical-aerospace field, as well as infrastructure and equipped area dedicated to industrial development of the sector “.
Di Palma pointed out that «Enac wants to invest huge resources in this project and the Region intends to do the same to favor production sites linked to new aerospace technologies in the Grottaglie airport. A project which, moreover, is part of the Special Economic Zone which can give further fiscal and procedural benefits to companies willing to bet on the future ».
“Not everyone believed in this option. We – said the governor of the Puglia Region Michele Emiliano – have insisted and we know that it will take time because a spaceport is the construction of a scientific culture that needs time to be realized ».