Airlander decides to move - WHY?

Accounts just filed show £2.8m loss with a poor CA position for the next 12 months or until they can sell something. As expected the Crowdcube Nov 16 projections were a joke showing a NP of over £500k.  

Airlander, makers of the world's largest air vehicle, are leaving their home in Bedforshire. They currently have no new location to go to. Their plans are already way behind schedule. The money has run out again and their accounts are late. So what's really going on?

Airlander has taken £3.2m off 2300 Crowdcube investors to date. It has continually promised things that have failed to appear. Now, as test flights appear to be doing well over the summer, the company has announced it is uprooting it's home and moving everything somewhere else. 

Does that make any sense?

This how the Bedfordshire site was described by the compnay in the CC pitch -

The Company took delivery of the prototype Airlander 10 in late December 2013 and at the same time secured a lease on one of the two historic and purpose-built Cardington airship hangers near Bedford, England. This purpose-built facility has been the home of the UK’s airship industry for around 100 years and is currently undergoing a major refurbishment. The Company considers itself to be well placed to grow its business at this site and drive hi-tech job creation in the region through the reassembly and return to flight of Airlander 10 under EASA approval, when secured. The Company has active support from the Bedfordshire community and local government. 

Sounds like a place to stay to us.

The protoype isnt something you can put in your van and relocate. In fact the requirements for relocation must be quite specific to allow this big white sofa to float off and come back again without interfering with anything around it. This they have had in Bedfordshire for the past 4 years. They were also close to London. And what is this going to cost? Again the relocation and its costs were never flagged up last year. In the 2016 pitch it showed £30m being raised in 2017. Well records at CH show only a fraction of this to date. 

In a piece by the BBC a few days ago, here, the CEO said - 

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) said it was the "right" and "pragmatic" decision.

"The success of Airlander means that we have had to review our needs for the future," said executive director Tom Grundy.

"Establishing new buildings at a new site will allow us to be sure that we have the facilities we need for the future, while allowing the film industry to take up the space it requires in Cardington."

So the prime reasons for moving are the need for more space and the need to help film industry? It wont come as any surprise that both rounds of Crowdcube investment, produced financials that are now complete tripe. Projected sales of £18m in 2017 and £130m in 2018, with a £25m NP, have now been replaced with a commercial launch in 2019. How is that success? 

One more point - in the last round in 2016, the company stated that it would not be using the investment to payback an o/s loan to one of the directors. On the 24 August 2017, this loan was satisfied in full according to CH. The money certainly did not come from any sales which remain firmly rooted at zero.

More announcements on this soon and possibly some accounts, may help to shed some light. Let's hope it's not all hot air.