The fibre of innovation running through a drone business

Today we present the eighth profile from our ongoing campaign to identify Australia’s 50 most innovative manufacturers. Brent Balinski speaks to Dario Valenza from Carbonix, who shares an approach applied at every place the company works to innovate.

Adapting his expertise in carbon fibre composite boat-building to uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs, or drones) about a decade ago, Dario Valenza did not have linear infrastructure in mind.

“The initial thinking was the platform can service many markets, we can carry different payloads according to the application, but the platform is pretty agnostic and has a pretty broad appeal,” the Carbonix founder tells us.

The quality of data able to be collected, its usefulness, the savings for asset owners, the size of the market and other factors have been a powerful draw. Inspections of power lines, train lines and pipelines are driving a lot of development at the drone business.

“That doesn’t mean that we don’t do the other applications,” he adds. 

“It’s just a matter of priority.”

Carbonix’s long-range, composite-bodied UAVs have been purchased for applications ranging from lifesaving to bushfire detection to military use.

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Valenza switched from Carbonix Boats to remotely-piloted aircraft in 2014 or so, after a career including work with America’s Cup racing teams.

Today Carbonix is a team of 28, which Valenza describes as highly multidisciplinary and engineering-heavy, including mechanical, aeronautical, electronics and software specialists.

“There are several streams that have to work together and be really well coordinated to produce a product that performs,” he says.

Though there is scope to design, build and repair products in-house, volume production is being migrated to Quickstep Holdings, which took a minority stake in Carbonix in 2021. 

The pair announced their second major contract this month, with Quickstep to build 40 aircraft over 12 months. 

As for the role of innovation, Valenza shares the below.

“It really comes down to questioning the status quo and looking at first principles,” he explains, adding that it can be highly valuable to bring wisdom from different industries into new ones. 

“A point of fact: applying stuff that was developed for making sailboats go faster to making aircraft go further, learning from different problems, and thinking at a level where you can recognise the key variables and come up with creative and innovative ways to address them.

“Using different tools, different materials, different processes, all in aid of improving the outcome, and being very disciplined about testing that against reality, against nature.”

Carbonix has nominated a recent project developing its latest airframe – which has “increased capability developed around customer requirements for power line inspections” – as a case study for @AuManufacturing’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers campaign.

As with other projects, it is informed by the continuous loop of hypothesis in aid of a goal, testing, examining which parts of the theory were correct and which weren’t, and refining. Valenza describes it as part of the company culture.

“We do that with the development of the aircraft itself, the business model, the way we approach customers and get their feedback about how they see our product working and what they would like to see added to the product to give them more value,” he explains. 

“So the short version is innovation is really about questioning the parameters and testing and finding out whether your theories are correct or not.”

In this episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations with Brent Balinski, Valenza elaborates on his approach to innovation, the challenges of developing drones for the infrastructure market, a recent announcement on hydrogen-electric propulsion with H3 Dynamics, where drones will be increasingly adopted, and more.

Pictures: supplied

Episode guide

1:16 – Origin story. 

2:25 – Background in America’s Cup racing and why that’s important.

3:15 – Why linear infrastructure has become the priority. 

5:10 – Relationship with Quickstep, and why they are a good fit as a contract manufacturer as volumes increase.

6:50 – The types of skills present at the company. 

8:16 – Innovation at Carbonix. “The short version is innovation is really about questioning the parameters and testing and finding out whether your theories are correct or not.”

10:30 – The new airframe developed in response to a need for improved climb rates and remote communications. 

11:40 – Moving to understand and answer customer considerations e.g. power lines, and then juggling engineering and design tradeoffs.

12:57 – The mission – operating drones at scale and how this is acted on.

13:40 – Hydrogen electric propulsion and drones, and why Carbonix is partnering with H3 Dynamics on this.

15:40 – Which industries UAVs will change, and the appeal of “remote one to many” applications. 

18:20 – “There’s a tendency to undervalue manufacturing” and what this leads to. And why there are signs this is changing.

19:38 – Attracting talent and developing it.

Further reading

QUICKSTEP SIGNS $1.5 M DEAL TO MANUFACTURE FOR DRONE DELIVERY COMPANY
CARBONIX BOOSTS DRONE PRODUCTION WITH QUICKSTEP ORDER
CARBONIX AND H3 DYNAMICS TO DEVELOP HYDROGEN-ELECTRIC DRONE
CARBONIX TO SUPPLY DRONES TO FUGRO
CARBONIX DRONES MONITOR REMOTE POWER LINES
CARBONIX BACKS DRONE OPERATION ROADMAP

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PUT YOURSELF FORWARD AT THIS LINK. NOMINATIONS CLOSE AT 5 PM (AEST) ON MAY 26. 

WATCH OUR LAUNCH WEBINAR HERE.

Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers is a new campaign by @AuManufacturing. It has been made possible by the generous support of  MYOB, SMC Corporation Australia, and Bosch Australia Manufacturing Solutions. Be sure to check back at this website for regular updates  including profiles of nominees and other information.