Gloucester space production facility opens after £4.8m grant

A new company that manufactures parts for the space industry has opened a new factory in Gloucester.

The automated production facility was opened by iCOMAT in Hardwicke on Monday after receiving £4.8m in funding from the UK Space Agency.

iCOMAT, which has increased its numbers of employees from 20 to 70 in the last year, expects to double its Gloucester workforce in the next year and generate 2,000 jobs over the next decade.

The company said it hopes to “revolutionise” lightweight space structures, with its founder Evangelos Zympeloudis adding carbon fibre is the “lightest, strongest engineering material” and should be in “every aeroplane, every car, every rocket”.