29 March 2019
Expanding our footprint.
Hi all,
I am pleased to say that as one of the steps on FBR's path to global commercialisation, we have leased a new 10,000m2 facility in High Wycombe, in the same street as our head office. This new facility will allow us to expand our operations and will be used to further develop the Hadrian X and test and develop concepts for automated building and DST applications. Our existing High Wycombe facility will continue as a workshop, outdoor testing facility and FBR's head office. Activities at our secret test facility will move to the new High Wycombe site, which will make our activities a bit more efficient and bring the team closer together.
We intend to continue our growth trajectory and this new facility will ensure our team have the right working environment and resources to succeed and meet the significant demand for Wall as a Service™ around the world. To maximise our first mover advantage, we always have to be thinking a few steps ahead, and this new facility will really help us execute on our global expansion and machine development plans to maximise value for our shareholders.
Right now our team is working with a Western Australian builder on the up front planning and approvals for our first outdoor commercial builds. It is really exciting for me to see this coming together after a lot of hard work. I've also been watching the growth in the European construction market and the associated labour shortage with interest, and it's clear there's a huge opportunity for the Hadrian X around the world, even while Australia (and in particular, Western Australia) is in a cyclical downturn.
We are testing a number of improvements we have made to the Hadrian X since the first outdoor build, mostly on the control software algorithm side, though we've made some small mechanical modifications too. The development work we're currently doing has always been part of the schedule, and without going into too much detail, we're currently working on developing more sophisticated control algorithms using the existing mechanical architecture of Hadrian X. Once completed and thoroughly tested we expect to achieve higher performance through a combination of running the internal robots at increased speed, and optimising their movement for a more efficient brick process path. As always, we'll show you the results of this testing at an appropriate time.
The video embedded below is a short clip of myself, Mike and Simon Amos, our Director Construction Technologies, enjoying the comfort of one of the finished rooms in the Build1 house and having a general discussion on where we've come from and where we're going.
Mark Pivac
Chief Technical Officer
FBR Limited