British startup Isembard lands $9M to reshore manufacturing for critical industries

Geopolitical pressures are accelerating a demand in many countries and regions to reshore — that is, to redevelop critical industry infrastructure, and to bring back businesses, which had moved or outsourced some or all of their industrial operations to cheaper countries further away. But that is easier said than done. In the key area of precision manufacturing, for example, most countries in the West are not set up to handle the current production demands that businesses face. This is the challenge Isembard aims to address. The British startup said it plans to create a network of factories across several Western locations. CEO Alexander Fitzgerald told TechCrunch that the first of these started to operate in London in January, and claims that it can already respond to requests for high-precision parts. It has yet to disclose further locations. The aim here is to target companies that may not be sinking billions of capex into their own factories, but typically would have contracted ... Read full article.