The announcement Wednesday that Swiss Space Systems had been declared bankrupt by a Swiss court caught local partners by surprise.
See: Swiss Space Systems declared bankrupt
Canadore President George says he learned of the bankruptcy at the same time as everyone else last week after reading media reports.
"I'm disappointed of course because we had a partnership with them and we did do one package of work for them on the research side. We were looking forward to continuing our research partnership with them. But given the business, some money ventures are successful, some aren't especially looking at some of the technologies they were involved with.
"We did the one package which was some avionics work for them and testing a flight box which was done using high altitude helicopters. There were other packets that were supposed to flow as part of their research plan. Now, no other research package has flowed to us so the work they contracted for here locally was completed with some of our local suppliers and Canadore. That's part of the disappointment, if they do not come out of the bankruptcy as the same company or a different company then we will have lost an opportunity."
Burton says doing the project "put North Bay on the map" with a whole different aspect of aerospace as a testing and development site.
"It's been beneficial to us in that way. We're having ongoing conversations with companies around aerospace. We have some great experience we gained through the S3 projects.
"It was a good learning experience. It put us on the map as a test site development site, so I guess it could have been worse had we a large financial commitment expected but because of circumstances we're coming out of this with the loss of a partner but that's the way this kind of works."
Mayor Al McDonald had little to say except that no city money had been spent on the S3 venture. "We hosted World space week and have gained connections in this industry which are very valuable going forward."
"There were no employees nor did they have an office here."
Swiss Space Systems has not updated its Facebook page since July.
BayToday reached out to Swiss Space Systems for a comment but did not receive a reply.
