US Navy deals put Adelaide company at the helm of defence manufacturing
“Cracking the US’s biggest fish”. Serious momentum is building behind an Adelaide-based advanced manufacturing company after it struck multiple multimillion-dollar deals with the US Navy.
In a North Plympton warehouse, the future of South Australian advanced manufacturing is taking shape, and it looks far more robot than man.
Large metal arms shoot tiny beads of molten metal onto a podium while the temperature is kept in check by small fans that rapidly cool the blisteringly hot product.
The only human intervention happens outside of the building space, where welding and robotics experts monitor the robot arms as they precisely build, bead-by-bead, parts of ships and submarines.
This work is being undertaken by an Adelaide-headquartered, ASX-listed company called AML3D.
To date, the firm has been – understandably – described as a 3D metal printing company.
But it’s the company’s software that has the real value. The bespoke tech turns digital blueprints of specific parts into something usable by the robot arms which then ‘print’ the pieces virtually out of thin air.
As such, CEO Sean Ebert thinks of AML3D as a software company first and foremost.
While the firm is focused on selling its machines to US Navy customers and other defence businesses, the money will come from subscriptions to its software; the hardware sales are just one-off agreements.
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The company is on a tear. In March, AML3D signed its biggest-ever purchase agreement, a $9.9 million order from Newport News Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) – the biggest shipbuilding company in the United States.
NNS bought four of AML3D’s ARCEMY X systems – the aforementioned robots. On completion of the order, NNS will have a fleet of six custom ARCEMY X systems, which it will use to build parts for boats.
Days later in the same month, AML3D received a $2.6 million order to manufacture five components for in-service trials on US Navy submarines.
The news has driven a surge in the company’s share price. At the time of writing, shares in the company were up 37.50 per cent over the course of March.
The company is positioning itself as a must-have in modern methods of manufacturing. It’s ‘printing’ method of making parts is not only faster than traditional casting, but the final product is lighter, meaning more room on the ships and submarines for personnel and weapons.
Speaking to InDaily from Washington D.C., Ebert said the deal with HII was “an amazing feat, especially for an Australian company”.
“Being an Australian company, domiciled in Adelaide, with great technology, we’ve managed to crack one of the biggest fish in the US,” Ebert said.
“They were desperate to get a hold of the technology, because they’re trying to fast-track parts for aircraft carriers and submarine programs.
“There may be more to come.”
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In D.C., Ebert had been meeting with senators, congressmen and other high-ranking officials to “get our names known”.
“We also caught up with the admiral in charge of the marine industrial base,” he said.
While the company’s home is Adelaide, a similar size setup of ARCEMY systems exists in Ohio too, where the company is supplying its US customers.
Ebert said the company was looking to double the size of the US building and take on another building.
From there, US staff can service the growing number of ARCEMY systems in the US – now at 16.
The UK is the other market on the company’s radar and AML3D recently won a contract with BAE Systems UK. That work is being done in Adelaide and shipped overseas.
Eventually, AML3D will set up a facility in the UK, allowing the business to start making parts for the AUKUS submarine program.
Ebert said he was in discussions with ASC and Austal to be part of the AUKUS centre of excellence here in South Australia.
“It looks like we’ll be one of the technology vendors selected for that centre for excellence,” Ebert said.
And it’s not just defence that the company is focused on, though Ebert admits “that’s where the greatest demand is”.
“But there are strong markets in the oil and gas space as well, and we’ve got a full-time business development person just focused on going after additive programs in energy, oil, gas and aerospace.
“The application of the technology can be applied to a wide number of sectors. It just happens to be the intensity is around defence at the moment.
“It’s a pretty exciting time for us, seeing our technology being adopted so widely. It started out being a niche technology, but now we’re finding it’s been adopted really quite widely. It’s quite impressive to see how it’s taken off.”
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