Astro Aerospace completes acquisition of Horizon Aircraft and appoints its co-founder and CEO as president

Astro Aero­space has closed the acqui­si­tion agree­ment with eVTOL air­craft devel­op­er Hori­zon Air­craft and appoint­ed Hori­zon’s co-founder and CEO Bran­don Robin­son as its pres­i­dent.

The acqui­si­tion will enable Astro Aero­space to pro­vide a com­plete prod­uct offer­ing across both com­mer­cial and indus­tri­al appli­ca­tions, with Astro three eVTOL mod­els under devel­op­ment — Alta, Elroy and Hori­zon’s Cavorite X5. The Astro prod­uct line includes sin­gle pas­sen­ger, pilot­ed mul­ti­ple pas­sen­ger, and car­go air­craft designs. 

Hori­zon acquired pri­vate fund­ing to build its Cavorite X5 pro­to­type, which will now be con­tin­ued by Astro through a com­mit­ted invest­ment. The 1:2 mod­el will be built at Hori­zon’s pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Lind­say, Ontario and is expect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Q1 2022. A full-scale, cer­ti­fied pro­to­type of the Cavorite X5 is expect­ed by the end of 2024.

Robin­son said: “This com­plet­ed Acqui­si­tion is a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for both com­pa­nies’ eVTOL projects to progress expo­nen­tial­ly. Astro’s respect­ed indus­try rep­u­ta­tion and avail­able fund­ing, togeth­er with Hori­zon’s engi­neer­ing and design tal­ent, will com­ple­ment Astro’s exist­ing prod­uct lines, ALTA and ELROY, and will accel­er­ate the devel­op­ment of Hori­zon’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary eVTOL, the Cavorite X5.”

The Cavorite X5 is the world’s first eVTOL to fly the major­i­ty of its mis­sion as a nor­mal air­craft. The hybrid-elec­tric air­craft car­ries four pas­sen­gers plus one pilot, and is built for oper­a­tional real­i­ties such as inclement weath­er, traf­fic avoid­ance and low-time pilots.

It trav­els up to 500 kilo­me­ters at a speed of 450 km/h and Hori­zon says it offers sig­nif­i­cant advan­tages over cur­rent con­ven­tion­al air­craft, includ­ing increased safe­ty, low­er oper­at­ing costs, reduced noise foot­print and low­er car­bon emis­sions. An exist­ing sub-scale pro­to­type has com­plet­ed more than 200 test flights.

As well as Robin­son being appoint­ed as pres­i­dent, Patri­cia Trompeter, who is cur­rent­ly a mem­ber of Astro’s Board of Direc­tors, will take on the role of chief exec­u­tive offi­cer. Bruce Bent will assume the role exec­u­tive chair­man to assist in imple­ment­ing the com­pa­ny’s busi­ness plan which has been devel­oped over the past two years.

Trompeter brings more than 16 years of expe­ri­ence in merg­ers and acqui­si­tions and 15 years in finan­cial man­age­ment expe­ri­ence to the posi­tion. After grad­u­at­ing from Mar­quette Uni­ver­si­ty’s Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion pro­gram with a major in Finance and Eco­nom­ics, Trompeter spent a large por­tion of her career hold­ing a vari­ety of exec­u­tive posi­tions at GE Cap­i­tal includ­ing CFO, Con­troller, Oper­a­tions Leader, Qual­i­ty Leader, and Merg­ers & Acqui­si­tions.

Dur­ing her career at GE Cap­i­tal, Trompeter par­tic­i­pat­ed in more than $17 bil­lion in acqui­si­tions and trans­ac­tions, earn­ing her a rep­u­ta­tion of pro­fes­sion­al excel­lence. After leav­ing GE Cap­i­tal, she focused on non-prof­it ven­tures and fam­i­ly before co-found­ing an inde­pen­dent invest­ment and advi­so­ry firm grow­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­nolo­gies in emerg­ing mar­kets. 

Trompeter said: “Bruce has been an indus­try pio­neer and dri­ving force behind Astro’s suc­cess, which has pro­gressed the Com­pa­ny’s vision into tan­gi­ble mile­stones. I am excit­ed to be work­ing with Bran­don, who pos­sess­es the abil­i­ty to devel­op aer­i­al solu­tions with the per­fect bal­ance of ana­lyt­i­cal and cre­ative.

“Their com­bined exper­tise will help me guide Astro through this trans­for­ma­tive chap­ter as the Com­pa­ny merges prod­uct lines, imple­ments Astro’s strate­gic vision and begins the NASDAQ uplist process.”