“ZeroAvia to Construct Manufacturing Hub in Scotland”

UK-based ZeroAvia, a U.S‑founded elec­tric propul­sion devel­op­er, recent­ly announced it is con­struct­ing a major man­u­fac­tur­ing facil­i­ty for pro­duc­tion of its hydro­gen-elec­tric pow­er­trains at the Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Inno­va­tion Dis­trict Scot­land, close to Glas­gow Air­port in Ren­frew­shire, reports a press release.  

This hub “will sup­port the com­pa­ny in a range of man­u­fac­tur­ing oper­a­tions relat­ing to pow­er­train pro­duc­tion and test­ing and will also be the company’s pri­ma­ry loca­tion for pro­duc­tion of advanced high tem­per­a­ture PEM (HTPEM) fuel cell stacks and sup­port­ing sys­tems,” explains the release. 

With close to 3,000 full engine and com­po­nent orders agreed with air­lines and OEMs, worth over USD10 bil­lion in future rev­enues, ZeroAvia is expand­ing its pro­duc­tion oper­a­tions to meet grow­ing demand.  

The new facil­i­ty will com­ple­ment the ZeroAvia’s Propul­sion Cen­tre in Wash­ing­ton State which is focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on elec­tric motors and pow­er elec­tron­ics. The com­pa­ny also has plans to expand its R&D and air­craft test­ing cen­tre at Cotswold Air­port in Glouces­ter­shire.

Val Mif­takhov, Founder and CEO of ZeroAvia, com­ment­ed, “Scot­land has some unique advan­tages with strong aero­space and engi­neer­ing skills, a bur­geon­ing hydro­gen sec­tor and a clear avi­a­tion strat­e­gy with poten­tial for ear­ly adop­tion of zero-emis­sion flights.”

He con­tin­ued, “We wel­come the grant award from Scot­tish Enter­prise and the sup­port of our equi­ty investors that has enabled us to move into a fur­ther phase of man­u­fac­tur­ing readi­ness as we progress towards cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our first engines.” 

Val Mif­takhov

The project in Scot­land will unlock mil­lions in pri­vate invest­ment and sup­port hun­dreds of jobs over the com­ing years. This has been made pos­si­ble by a UKP9 mil­lion Region­al Selec­tive Assis­tance grant from Scot­tish Enter­prise, fol­low­ing an equi­ty invest­ment of UKP20 mil­lion from the Scot­tish Nation­al Invest­ment Bank into ZeroAvia as part of the company’s Series C fund­ing. The UK Nation­al Wealth Fund has also invest­ed UKP32 mil­lion as a cor­ner­stone-lev­el investor in the round. 

John Swin­ney, First Min­is­ter of Scot­land, remarked, “ZeroAvia’s deci­sion to estab­lish a base in Scot­land — cre­at­ing 350 high­ly-skilled jobs in the process — is the per­fect illus­tra­tion of Scotland’s grow­ing rep­u­ta­tion in the glob­al tran­si­tion to net zero.”  

He added, “By set­ting out a strate­gic vision in pri­or­i­ty areas such as hydro­gen, we are send­ing a clear state­ment to investors and busi­ness­es that Scot­land is at the heart of the green ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion. The Hub will be at the fore­front of fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy and offers a huge­ly promis­ing and excit­ing propo­si­tion for sus­tain­able avi­a­tion.” 

Mean­while, the UK Gov­ern­ment award­ed ZeroAvia and con­sor­tium part­ners UKP10.5 mil­lion to devel­op the advanced HTPEM fuel cells last year via the Aero­space Tech­nol­o­gy Insti­tute (ATI) pro­gram in con­junc­tion with the Depart­ment for Busi­ness and Trade and Inno­vate UK. 

The UK Gov­ern­ment has award­ed the com­pa­ny UKP18.5 mil­lion total R&D fund­ing since 2019. This sup­port along­side more than USD250 mil­lion pri­vate invest­ment has enabled ZeroAvia to make rapid progress. This led to fly­ing the world’s first hydro­gen-elec­tric com­mer­cial scale air­craft in 2020; more than dou­bling the pow­er out­put to again fly the world’s largest hydro­gen-elec­tric air­craft in 2023; man­u­fac­tur­ing and ship­ping fuel cell sys­tems to cus­tomers; and secur­ing sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­to­ry trac­tion for the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of its first pow­er­trains.

Ian Mur­ray, the Scot­tish Sec­re­tary, said,  “Cru­cial invest­ment from the UK Gov­ern­ment is help­ing to devel­op the fuel cell tech­nol­o­gy that will be man­u­fac­tured here in Scot­land at this new facil­i­ty. It is a per­fect exam­ple of the UK and Scot­tish Gov­ern­ments work­ing togeth­er to dri­ve inno­va­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing in Scot­land.” 

The Advanced Man­u­fac­tur­ing Inno­va­tion Dis­trict Scot­land (AMIDS) is a col­lab­o­ra­tive project between Ren­frew­shire Coun­cil and Buc­cleuch Prop­er­ty which tar­gets estab­lish­ing Ren­frew­shire as Scotland’s home for man­u­fac­tur­ing inno­va­tion. 

ZeroAvia will advance plan­ning of its facil­i­ty at AMIDS over the next few months and plans ini­tial­ly to locate team mem­bers at the adja­cent Nation­al Man­u­fac­tur­ing Insti­tute Scot­land (NMIS).   

For more infor­ma­tion

ZeroAvia.com

(Images: ZeroAvia/Dominic Weeks)

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