“If you look around the building, you’ll notice there’s a touch, a nod to the past,” Barry Kennedy said, recalling the previous operations in the Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) facility on the Dublin Road, Mullingar, a time before Golden Virginia and Drum tobacco were replaced by robotic arms and 3D printers.

The Imperial Tobacco factory was in operation from 1967 to 2016. The aside by the CEO of IRM appealed to the many engineering minds in the room, gathered for the official launch of Ireland’s First European Space Agency ‘Phi-Lab on Friday.

“You’ll see the doors here,” he said, “the steel, rolling doors. They’re fire doors. There’s a weight on the back of the door with two pieces of metal that are soldered together. In the event of a fire, the solder melts, plates separate, the weight falls and the door closes. That was the first fire detection automatic door. That’s the technology that was in here.”

Last Friday, the technological leap that took us from tobacco production to cutting edge manufacturing research was emphasised as representatives from many of the 120 companies who work in Ireland’s space sector assembled for the Phi-Lab launch.

It is a new facility, and will be run in collaboration with the AMBER Centre at Trinity College Dublin, with the aim of helping businesses to tap in to the €170 million the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment is committed to investment to ESA over the next five years.

In much the same way that the quaintly obsolete technology that secured the tobacco factory doors has been replaced by advanced manufacturing, materials discovery, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and robotics, so too is the Irish workforce changing.

Mr Kennedy said the establishment of ESA Phi-Lab Ireland in Mullingar represents “a flagship element of that €170 investment” and will translate policy into infrastructure designed to accelerate space-enabled innovation and high-value job creation.

The ESA Phi-Lab Ireland was launched by Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment Peter Burke, who unveiled a commemorative plaque at IMR’s Advanced Manufacturing Lab. That was another nod to the past, and again had local significance, as the plaque was produced using a space-grade material mounted on a 6,500-year-old piece of Westmeath bog oak.

The Phi-Lab Network “matures technologies”. Just as Irish Manufacturing Research provides research and development facilities to a range of companies from tech to pharma to food the Phi-Lab will do the same for relevant service users.

The technologies will have applications across in-space and terrestrial manufacturing, agriculture, energy systems, climate innovation, and critical infrastructure, positioning the new Mullingar-based centre at the intersection of space research and real-world industrial impact.

“We’re delighted to be able to showcase and talk about an exciting journey that Ireland is going to go on now in the space sector,” Mr Kennedy said. “Our story started here over 12 years ago with no employees.

“I’m delighted to say we now have 144 researchers and technologists providing all kinds of technological skills to support manufacturing across the biomed, pharma, ICT, and now, the space sector.”

The IMR chief executive spoke of the importance for the Phi-Lab launch: “Today is a vote of confidence from the European Space Agency, and it’s more than just a milestone for our facility here in Mullingar, it’s actually a win for the entire country and for Europe.

“Locating this centre in Mullingar reinforces that world-class innovation can thrive regionally by delivering national strategic impacts, and we’re delighted to play our part in that. Today is not simply the opening of the programme, it’s Ireland finding its place in the global sector of strategic and commercial importance and equipping companies with the capability to lead in space.”

Philip Thomas, head of the ScaleUp Programme Division in ESA’s Commercialisation, Industry and Competitiveness Directorate, was one of the agency’s representatives on site for the inauguration. “The ESA Phi-Lab Ireland is a critical part of Ireland’s growing space sector,” Mr Thomas said. “It has a great contribution to the space sector in Europe overall with its specific focus on additive manufacturing. It is going to help rapidly take ideas through into commercial solutions with the support of the Phi-Lab.”

Ireland’s new Phi-Lab is one of 10 across Europe and its aim is to reinforce Ireland’s emergence as a strategic hub in the space and advanced manufacturing landscape.