The Russian Space Communications Company (RSCC) has loans in place to raise ?208m to develop three satellites, CFO Dennis Pivnyuk told SatelliteFinance.
Russian manufacturer Information Satellite Systems (ISS) will build two DTH satellites, Express-AT1…
The Russian Space Communications Company (RSCC) has loans in place to raise ?208m to develop three satellites, CFO Dennis Pivnyuk told SatelliteFinance.
Russian manufacturer Information Satellite Systems (ISS) will build two DTH satellites, Express-AT1 and Express-AT2, and the telecommunications bird Express-AM8. France’s Thales Alenia Space will be responsible for the delivery of payloads for all three satellites.
To finance the Thales contract, ?112.3m will be raised through a loan that is 85% covered by Coface and 15% by undisclosed banks, Pivnyuk said.
The ISS contract will be financed by a commercial loan that will raise Rbs4bn (?95m) with an interest rate of around 10%, he continued. Pivnyuk added that the Coface loan will have a maturity of 7.5 to eight years, noting that the commercial loan tenor could be shorter. He expects the floating rate to be below 500 basis points over Euribor, with the fixed rate being slightly higher – although the float vs fix has yet to be decided.
The Express-AT1 satellite will carry 32 Ku-band transponders at 56E, replacing RSCC’s Bonum 1 satellite in 2012. Express earmarked for a 2012 launch. Both DTH satellites will cover the European part of Russia, the Urals and Eastern Siberia.
“The Express-AT1 and Express-AT2 satellites open new outlooks for developing direct-to-home broadcasting systems in the Russian Federation including provision of HD and 3D television services,”
RSCC director general Yuri Prokhorov said in a statement announcing the contracts.
Scheduled to launch in 2013, RSCC’s Express-AM8 will carry 42 transponders at 14W. Of these transponders, 24 will be Cband, 16 Ku-band and two will be L-band. The spacecraft will be RSCC’s most western satellite, covering broadcast networks in Europe, Africa and Caribbean Basin countries.
Pivnyuk also confirmed that the company’s other two satellites under construction, the Express-AM5 and Express- AM6, are going according to schedule.
The two birds, which are being built by ISS with Canadian manufacturer MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, are awaiting a critical design review, which Pivnyuk said is likely to be completed in December.
The financing for these satellites is covered under the Russian state’s 2006-2015 Federal Space Program for Russia. They aim to provide a broad suite of commercial and government telecoms services, and are set for launch in 2012.
