The only UK-based ‘cobots’ provider has doubled in size due to acquiring global branded customers.
Reeco Automation has doubled the number of staff employed at its mid-Wales headquarters in the last year.
Reeco, which now employs eight people at its base in Caersws, has secured a number customers including Ford, Rolls Royce, Honeywell and Unilever.
The firm, founded in August 2016 by managing director Llewelyn Rees, is a turnkey solutions provider for collaborative robots – known as ‘cobots’ – integrating technology on to production lines with the aim of working with humans to improve efficiency.
The global market for cobots is expected to grow by more than 40 per cent per year and be worth over £3 billion by 2020.
Llewelyn said: “We are experiencing rapid growth as more and more organisations are appreciating the way in which cobots can complement their human workforce – transforming the way they do things.
“While much of our work has been with large multinationals, we are also partnering with ambitious SMEs which are harnessing increasing automation into their production processes.
“Cobots are helping to accelerate business growth in companies of all sizes and across many different sectors.”
Before setting up Reeco, Llewelyn spent 15 years working with industrial robots before switching his attention to cobots.
Cobots were first launched five years ago and were created specifically to work alongside as co-workers where an industrial robot is not suitable.
By using cobots to carry out a range of tasks, employees can be freed up to work on more important tasks requiring human intervention.
Llewelyn added: “Customers like the fact that we are a full turnkey solutions and safety provider. We have had a year of strong growth and 2019 has begun well.
“Alongside growth in the UK, we are looking at international expansion and will have a need to recruit the best possible cobot engineering talent as well as people for a range of other roles.”