A metal pressings specialist has secured more than £500,000 of funding to help it develop new laminates for use in an electrification project.
Brandauer, which employs 60 people at its factory in Birmingham, is proving out a manufacturing process for creating special stacks used in a new highly sustainable motor for the light commercial and off-highway vehicles.
The firm is part of the UK-Alumotor consortium that is being led by Ricardo and includes partners Aspire Engineering, Warwick Manufacturing Group, Phoenix Scientific Industries and Global Technologies Racing.
Funding worth £4 million has come from the ‘Driving the Electric Revolution Challenge’ at UK Research and Innovation, with the consortium tasked with delivering, testing and validating pre-production of a highly sustainable motor.
Fifteen staff at the Birmingham firm are expected to be involved in the project.
Mark Parsons, innovation project manager at Brandauer, said: "This is another exciting win for us and reinforces our growing expertise in paper thin laminations for electric motor stators and rotors.
"If the UK is going to lead the world in electrification, we need to build supply chain capacity and new technology which is why the UK-Alumotor project is another important step forward in this aim.
"The market opportunity is huge. At present, there are 63,000 electric light commercial vehicles made annually but this is forecast to grow to 282,000 vehicles by 2026, continuing to rise to 345,000 vehicles two years later."
Chief executive Rowan Crozier added: "It is so important that SMEs can access funding to develop new technologies.
"It minimises the risk we take in undertaking R&D and can sometimes be the difference between us committing to a project or not."
