Isembard, a manufacturer of components for the defence, aerospace, energy and robotics sectors, has opened the largest factory in central London since the Second World War.
The Company has grown revenue by 10 times year over year in the last twelve months and expects to raise significant additional funding to support its ambitious expansion plans on a global scale, and with the opening of the 160,000 sq ft global headquarters and factory in Southwark it now has 15 factories across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States – up from 4 at the start of 2026
This announcement comes as the company expects to raise significant additional funding to support its ambitious expansion plans on a global scale.
Component manufacturing is a market worth $1.8 trillion a year, yet, according to Isembard, small businesses account for 95% of production. What’s more the average owner is over 65, and 40% plan to retire within five years.
This potential capacity reduction coincides with rising demand from aerospace, defence, energy and robotics companies. Isembard's model combines owned and franchisee factories that use its proprietary agentic operating system, MasonOS to close that gap. It aims to give factory operators the technology, brand, engineering standards and customer demand to run high-performance manufacturing businesses from day one.
The Southwark site spans 160,000 sq ft and will serve as Isembard's global head office alongside a working precision factory, producing components for aerospace, defence and robotics customers, including Anduril, Babcock and Tekever. The location and scale of the manufacturing operation are intended to give Isembard access to London’s vast technology talent pool while keeping its teams close to the day-to-day realities of running a large-scale production site.
The factory houses 3-axis and 5-axis milling machines, turn-mill centres and wire EDM machiness alongside a climate-controlled metrology lab.
The office overlooks the factory floor through floor-to-ceiling windows, giving Isembard's software and robotics engineers a direct, real-time view of production as they develop MasonOS and the company's forthcoming robotics technology.
Isembard expects headcount at the Southwark HQ to grow from 35 today to 200 by the end of 2027, spanning production, software, manufacturing and robotics automation engineering alongside wider support functions for the group's factory network.
Isembard is targeting 100 owned and franchisee factories across the UK alone by the end of 2028, a programme expected to create 2,200 high-skilled jobs.
Southwark was one of London's manufacturing centres for centuries, with foundries, engineering works, printworks and tanneries clustered around Bankside and Bermondsey, and wharves and dockyards along the river handling goods bound for the rest of the country. It is also where Isambard Kingdom Brunel — the engineer after whom the company is named — spent his early career driving the Thames Tunnel out from Rotherhithe.
Alexander Fitzgerald, Founder and CEO of Isembard, said: "Manufacturing is the origin of our security, prosperity and sense of purpose as nations. No one has opened a factory like this in London since the Second World War and that tells you how far our industrial base has been allowed to shrink. Bringing production back onshore is the work of the next decade. What we need now are the brightest engineering minds of our generation to join us. Engineers, you have nothing to lose but your chains!”