By Luiza Ilie

GHIMBAV, Romania, May 12 (Reuters) - In his defence startup's new production plant in central Romania, Bogdan Ochiana gingerly lifts a Ukraine-tested attack drone he soon hopes to sell to European countries and beyond.

Orbotix Industries, with existing facilities in Spain and Ukraine, recently raised 6.5 million euros ($7.63 million) from U.S. and German investors to advance its AI-based drone swarming technology and open small sites across the European Union.

Warsaw-based Orbotix, which was founded in 2024, opened its Romanian facility in the central town of Ghimbav on Tuesday. Orbotix founder and CEO Ochiana said it will become operational in three to six months and be able to make 800 drones a month.

Orbotix has developed jamming and spoofing resistant attack drone Wasper-1 and surveillance drone Vigil-1, which its chief operating officer Alberto Llabata said had been tested in Ukraine, Estonia, Romania and elsewhere.

NATO and EU state Romania shares a 650 km (400-mile) land border with Ukraine and has seen Russian drones repeatedly breach its airspace and fragments fall in its territory as Moscow attacks Ukrainian ports just across the Danube river.

With drone threats mounting on NATO's eastern flank, Romania and its peers are boosting their air defences and identifying relatively low-cost drones and jamming technologies.

Romania and Ukraine also plan to jointly produce drones under the EU's new SAFE rearmament funding mechanism. Ochiana said Orbotix was in talks with Ukrainian firms for such a joint venture, which could start production by January 2027.

Earlier this year, Orbotix signed a deal with Romanian state-owned aerospace firm Romaero RORX.BX which will enable it to scale up production to 1,500 units per month.

"We are in talks with the Romanian government and other (EU) governments for acquisitions under SAFE and other contracts and we will be able to tell you in a month whether we will make SAFE products here," Ochiana told Reuters.

He said he expected European interest in drones to grow in the event of a ceasefire or peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv. Further cooperation with Ukraine would help European companies compete with global drone makers and boost exports.

"Europe will be in a position to become a net exporter of drones to Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia," Ochiana said, adding that his company was focused on external markets.

EU officials present at Orbotix's plant opening said that although Europe was raising its defence spending, market fragmentation and regulation were a major challenge.

"We need to build a single market in Europe for the defence industry, there's too much fragmentation," said Rafal Sordyl, head of Poland's foreign ministry's defence industry division.

"By 2030, European countries will spend 800 billion on defence per year, which is ... very close to what the U.S. is spending. But we only have to spend more than Russia, right? It's going to be many times more than Russia."

($1 = 0.8523 euros)