Defence tech start-up gets £7bn boost for robot factories network
A technology start-up that wants to help re-arm Britain with factories of automated robots has raised £7m from investors.
London-based Isembard, named after the revered civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was founded last year by entrepreneur Alexander Fitzgerald.
The company is developing high-tech factories that can quickly and cheaply manufacture precision components for critical industries such as defence and aerospace.
Most of these are currently made by a legion of small businesses that feed into the processes of larger companies, such as engine maker Rolls-Royce or defence contractor BAE Systems.
But Mr Fitzgerald, an Army reservist who previously founded challenger broadband provider Cuckoo, said the market is highly fragmented, with many of the firms not making use of the latest technologies or automation techniques.
Many small manufacturers are also losing a growing number of machinists to retirement – creating skills gaps that must be filled.
It comes as demand for precision components is surging as Britain and its European allies scramble to ramp up production of defence equipment including missiles, drones and ammunition in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Fitzgerald said Isembard aims to tackle the problem by setting up a network of factories that operate modular machine tools linked together by the company's in-house computer software.
This will allow the company to remotely design parts, produce them and potentially assemble them as well. The modular nature of the factories should also mean production lines can be quickly reconfigured or scaled up.
Mr Fitzgerald said British manufacturing currently relied on 'a long tail of family-run machine shops' but warned: 'The existential threat we face is that the average age of the owners of these businesses is approaching retirement.
'So there is a huge risk that capacity starts to drop, just as demand from critical industries such as defence is really starting to ramp up.
'Rather than build a single large factory, we think the answer is to build a network of smaller factories.'
According to MakeUK, the industry group, 60pc of the manufacturing workforce in Britain is aged 50 or above.
There is also an acute shortage of workers known as computer numerical control machinists, who control the robots that machine or process parts, with nearly one fifth of vacancies taking up to a year to fill.
Isembard is also hoping to tap into greater demand for the 'reshoring' of manufacturing domestically, following global supply chain chaos caused by the Covid pandemic and the US-China trade war.
Investors who backed Isembard in its funding round include Notion Capital, 201 Ventures, Basis Capital, Forward Fund, Material Ventures, Neverlift Ventures and NP-Hard Ventures, as well as angel investors Andreas Klinger and Joshua Western, the founder of Space Forge.
The money will be used to fully develop the company's first factory in London and potentially other sites. Isembard says it is already doing work for defence clients that it cannot disclose.
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