Startup Varda Space Industries snags former Mattel plant in El Segundo

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In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls.The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E.Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said.

Originally built in the 1940s as an aircraft facility, the complex has a history as part of aerospace and defense industries that have long shaped the South Bay and is near a host of major defense and space contractors.It is also close to Los Angeles Air Force Base, headquarters to the Space Systems Command.

Varda is one of a new generation of aerospace startups that have flourished in Southern California and the South Bay over the last several years, particularly in El Segundo, often with ties to SpaceX.Elon Musk’s company, founded in 2002 in El Segundo, has revolutionized the industry with reusable rockets that have radically lowered the cost of lifting payloads into space.Though it has moved its headquarters to Texas, SpaceX retains large-scale operations in Hawthorne.Varda co-founder and Chief Executive Will Bruey is a former SpaceX avionics engineer, and the company’s spacecraft are launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.Varda makes automated labs that look like cylindrical desktop speakers, which it sends into orbit in capsules and satellite platforms it also builds.

There, in microgravity, the miniature labs grow molecular crystals that are purer than those produced in Earth’s gravity for use in pharmaceuticals.It has contracts with drug c...