Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and Australian building material supplier Brickworks have formed a 50/50 joint venture to focus on residential construction.
The joint venture will offer a “Wall as a Service” operation, with FBR’s Hadrian X construction robot laying the bricks and Brickworks providing masonry blocks optimised for use with the machine.
FBR has already received the first shipment of concrete masonry blocks from Brickworks. The blocks are being tested at a new 10,000 sq m facility based in High Wycombe in western Australia.
The joint venture will last three years, but can be extended.
FBR’s 10,000 sq m facility (FBR)
Mike Pivac, FBR’s chief executive, said: “We are very pleased to have a joint venture partner in Australia with the reputation and scale of Brickworks to jointly offer Wall as a Service to the Australian market. The joint venture will demonstrate the capabilities of the Hadrian X and test our business model for the commercialisation of Wall as a Service.”
In November 2018, Hadrian X built a complete house in three days, and in July 2017, Caterpillar announced that it would buy $2m (£1.53m) shares in FBR.
FBR said in a recent press release that it is planning “global commercialisation” of its operations.
