DroneShield triples capacity with new site
DroneShield has officially opened a new headquarters at Pyrmont, in Sydney’s inner-city, where the drone countermeasures company says it has tripled its R&D and manufacturing capacity.
In a statement on Tuesday, DroneShield said the facility hosts its team of 120 and has headroom to produce “$400 million in hardware and software per year”.
The new site is 2,000 square metres in area, with expansion “under discussion”, and a dedicated floor for R&D, engineering and manufacturing.
The investment follows a capital raise of $115 million ($30 million of this is subject to shareholder approval) for the ASX-listed defence contractor.
It said there were plans for “40 employees to be added in the short term” as it builds out artificial intelligence and machine learning in its products for detecting, identifying and responding to drone threats.
“We are seeing a major push for comprehensive counter-drone and counter-UAS capabilities – [predominantly] from the US, but broadly across Five Eyes and allies, and slowly but surely in Australia,” said CEO Oleg Vornik.
“However, our equipment is sophisticated, AI based technology that can take up to four months to build, containing up to 200 components that must be manufactured, assembled and quality controlled.
“Supply chain and inventory certainty is critical, and we are leveraging funds from the $115m capital raise to enable us to create upwards of $400m in equipment per year – all within Australia, at the new facility, as a truly sovereign defence supplier – for global customers that expect high performance equipment to be available right away.”
According to the company it has a pipeline of over $500 million on order, with more than 90 qualified projects at different stages and $27 million in orders currently being fulfilled.
Droneshield was a part of @AuManufacturing‘s recently-announced Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers list.
Picture: supplied
Further reading
DroneShield to raise $75 million to fuel growth
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