Aeromech was founded to bridge the gap between academia and industry by creating opportunities for big thinkers. Billy Friend sat down with founder and director Joe Bryant to learn about the company’s ambitions to propel Australia into the upper echelon of advanced composites manufacturing.
Fresh from university, Joe Bryant began his career as an aerospace engineer with Airbus, working on the company’s first composite helicopter, the ARH Tiger. To advance his knowledge on composites, Bryant’s mentor Julien Fabreguette organised for him to work at Airbus Helicopters in France. Here, Bryant learned from start to finish the minutiae of composite materials: manufacturing, assembly and repair at the large-scale plant in Marignane, near Marseille.
Upon his return, Bryant eventually led Airbus Australia’s only composites manufacturing plant, and later on Airbus’ NH90 final assembly and flight line.
“When I became general manager of the plant I got a really good grasp of not only the technical side of composites, but the supply chain, quality, operations and design – all of which were the foundation of Aeromech moving forward,” he said. “In 2017, I decided I wanted to branch out and take a journey on my own to make a difference.”
Leaving Airbus, Bryant finished his MBA on exchange at Harvard University, studying business strategy, in preparation to launch his own company.
It was clear that Australia was trying to forge its own way in a mission to become world leaders in defence and space manufacturing, but a clear gap remained. The COVID pandemic shined a light on Australia’s reliance on international supply chains, so Bryant saw an opportunity to strengthen local capability. After a period of consulting work, he leveraged his own experience with a local network of experienced design engineers, ex-colleagues from Airbus and IP lawyers to enter manufacturing locally in Queensland.
SARGO
The trajectory of Aeromech’s manufacturing was kickstarted in 2021, when water authorities turned to industry for a product that could improve on existing, and sometimes unreliable, dropped static equipment to conduct Marine Search and Rescue and Coast Guard aircraft rescues.
In the past year, The Australian Marine Safety Authority (AMSA) responded to 390 incidents and saved over 199 lives, but existing technology didn’t allow for a device to be dropped from a search and rescue aircraft using a parachute and remotely navigated to the people in need.
Aeromech went about designing a product from scratch to solve this specific problem, making a world-first Search and Rescue USV (Unmanned Surface Vehicle) – Search and Rescue Go (SARGO).
SARGO is an unmanned surface vehicle which is designed specifically to be dropped from marine Search and Rescue and Coast Guard aircraft to land safely on top of the ocean’s surface using a parachute. It can then be operated remotely to transport a payload of life- saving cargo such as a life raft, water, communications equipment, and supplies to a stricken vessel or to people stranded in the water.
“The first checkpoint for me was this has to be self-righting,” he said. “We had certain checkpoints or milestones to achieve along the way, because I was funding this myself. We built SARGO as a showpiece and the feedback from industry was ‘Joe, this is incredible.’”
Noakes Group CEO Sean Langman said the vessel maintenance company, located in Sydney, was impressed by SARGO, in particular its design, capability and potential.
“We believe SARGO has the potential to change the way we address search and rescue operations, both domestically and internationally,” he said. “SARGO is a product that can fill the gap that currently exists within the search and rescue market. We will continue to support Joe wherever possible, supporting young
Australian companies that show initiative and innovation to ensure the lives of those at sea have access to technology such as SARGO,” he said.
Without the resources and market share of say an Airbus or Boeing, it’s extremely difficult for new companies to absorb costs if there isn’t a clear, concurrent need for a new product in the market.
In the case of SARGO, market research lead Aeromech to find existing products were designed to be thrown from the shore, rather than dropped from a helicopter. Industry figureheads explained to Bryant that the current techniques from helicopters aren’t 100 per cent accurate, sometimes missing the rescue target in the water below.
“A key objective for water authorities is to be continually innovating and adopting the best technology to save more lives. We wanted something that could be more reliable, more cost effective, and have higher accuracy of actually getting to the target,” he said
OHS was a key consideration for the product, with the full payload only reaching less than fifteen kilos. SARGO’s only maintenance procedure is being flushed with fresh water, making it easy to manage.
“Because we’re small, we don’t have the massive overheads of the bigger organisations. In order to be competitive in the aerospace industry, you need to know how to manufacture cost effectively, with quality consistency,” Bryant explained.
“The beauty of SARGO is that it will not only save lives and keep rescuers safe, but also puts Australian manufacturing on the world stage, while also creating new jobs. We want to be part of the revival of Australian manufacturing of high-quality products that are used all over the world to better it – and SARGO is our first step in doing that.”
With glowing reviews from experts within the search and rescue industry, Bryant is extremely encouraged by the potential of SARGO. Last year, Aeromech received the Queensland State Government’s Ignite 8 Commercialisation Grant to support SARGO’s entry into the domestic and international markets.
“We’ll use that funding to rebrand and reach some of the bigger organisations,” he said. “We are not only looking at coast guards and governments, but also search and rescue suppliers. SARGO can be great for cruise ships or ships in the arctic which struggle with supply. There are different avenues in this exciting journey.
“SARGO can be modified to anything anyone wants. It has up to two hours of battery life, but you could increase that by fitting in another battery. It was meant to be a platform that we could use amongst multiple industries and can be developed or modified. Things have to be easy – maintenance processes can be complicated and expensive so simplifying for the end user was a priority.”
SEEKER
The patented SARGO design made way for Aeromech’s second Australian- manufactured product, SEEKER – a search and rescue unmanned surface vehicle (USV) designed to provide above and underwater surveillance, which is due to be released in early 2023.
Off the back of conversations with the Australian Navy, Bryant found existing products for this application were extremely high-tech, heavy, expensive and require multiple people to operate.
“I thought, what can we do that is super high quality but low cost, so that if it gets destroyed it’s not the end of the world,” Bryant noted. “We leveraged
the design of SARGO and modified it to include a set of sensors. We’ve got sonar, a pinger for depth, temperature, underwater and above water cameras and a significant battery life of around four hours. If there’s something underwater 50 metres away, the sonar will pick it up and measure the depth. This is an opportunity for something lightweight to be in the water 50 metres ahead of a big ship arriving at Moreton Bay, for example, to measure the depth and scan for anything in the water.”
A key differentiator for SEEKER is its compact size at less than 15 kilos with only one maintenance policy – flush with fresh water after use. Bryant and his team’s expert lean knowledge and understanding of aerospace manufacturing meant using the same moulds as SARGO and adding the necessary modifications.
The applications for SEEKER stretch further than the Australian Navy – police could use the equipment for searching through dams, the department of agriculture could deploy it to assess the risks of rescuing a captured whale in a fish net or customs could survey the area if they don’t want to quickly approach an unknown boat.
“With SEEKER we wanted to leverage what we’d learnt with SARGO to produce another high quality product and further prove our capability. We are always looking at that next concept that keeps us at the edge of tech,” he said.
“If we had to do SEEKER from scratch, it would have taken a long time to put together, but all the gateways were already open with us after SARGO.
It comes down to manufacturing in a smart way by leveraging off those existing networks and suppliers.”
Training courses
An exciting aspect of Aeromech’s business is its training, setting up courses on advanced composites manufacturing for in person, digital and hybrid intelligence training. With the level of experience at its disposal, the company is setting up an aerospace capability and manufacturing facility in southeast Queensland this year to support the evolving aerospace and space sectors.
Aeromech is already providing consulting expertise to a number of government and space organisations to support their understanding of the manufacturing and facilities requirements to manufacture with Advanced Composite Materials.
Initially, the idea for a fully portable advanced composites manufacturing plant began for Aeromech’s own products as a way to avoid setting up cleanrooms at exorbitant rates. Bryant soon discovered there wasn’t a complete turnkey facility available for newer companies to leverage.
“We developed the concept inhouse – our fully portable plant has the fridge, freezer, workbenches, vacuum, oven,” Bryant said.
“I started to see a gap in all things composites and training. There’s very few opportunities for companies because the barriers are so high, so I thought we could use this concept to transport to a company anywhere in Australia that just wants to manufacture parts for three months, then we will remove it. That means all the materials and skill sets are provided within this facility.”
The new concept is set up for educational institutions and/or companies to lease for a period of time, so it’s easier for new players to sign off on a dollar amount per month. In most cases, it’s unrealistic to purchase all the required capital equipment without huge business cases.
“The beauty of it is we have the networks with the supply chain to order the minimum order quantities that someone needs,” Bryant explained.
“It’s very, very difficult to manage composites – some suppliers won’t deal with people for less than 10 rolls of fabric or prepreg. With this concept, people don’t have to worry about that. They don’t have to worry about paperwork, work orders, maintenance on the facility or skillsets (it’s very hard
to get skill sets for composites). We will provide all that for whoever wants to use it, whether it’s training or whether it’s in house to manufacture composite products for the next 12 months.”
Professor Peter Schubel heads the University of Southern Queensland’s (UniSQ) advanced composites program and supported the establishment of Australia’s first privately-owned, static rocket testing site. In 2021, Rocket Technologies International (RTI) and the UniSQ partnered to build the Helidon facility to boost capacity on home soil and support fledgling rocket manufacturing companies enter the space race.
“Aeromech have partnered with UniSQ to develop an Advanced Composite Manufacturing micro-credential course to support both current and future students and any professional in industry looking to gain a better understanding of advanced composite materials,” Bryant said.
“We’re also working with TAFE Queensland for students or simply people who want to return to learn about advanced composites. It is all encompassing training from understanding the basics of composites right through to setting up and running an advanced manufacturing plant but we’ll break down the barriers by bringing a real-life environment to people. When people enter industry – which is coming – they’ll feel like they’ve been there and have that level of confidence. Employers can feel comfortable that these people have been trained to a level that would be expected of an Airbus or Boeing.”
Bryant teased in our interview that aerospace and space manufacturing in Australia is only going to accelerate, so I probed to ask what areas he sees leading the way.
“Companies are starting to get into the small satellite manufacturing here,” he said. “It’s going to be an industry which takes Australia by storm in the next 5 to 15 years.”
Canberra-based space-services company Skykraft recently sent the largest Australian-made payload into space, with five satellites lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The launch will be the first of over 200 satellites set to orbit the Earth over the next two years that will make global air travel smoother and more efficient. In the same vein, as interest increases in satellites made in Australia, so does rocket manufacturing. Skykraft is just one example of Australian companies on the world’s space stage, but Bryant admitted that the skills and manufacturing aren’t quite there to support huge growth as of yet.
“We don’t necessarily have the advanced composites expertise and understanding of the testing environment to support that yet,” he noted.
“The feedback we’ve got from big leaders such as UniSQ and UQ is that students would benefit from more practical training initiatives, aiding their job readiness. There is a significant gap between understanding composites and actually working with composites in the real world. I know firsthand, some of the space organisations are looking to manufacture smaller rockets and people just don’t have the capital equipment or the expertise and know-how to do that.”
Defence has invested money on future programs to help advance sovereign capability, as composites are being used more on Australian soil. The use
of the materials in advanced platforms like space and aerospace has grown every year, as it becomes cheaper with economies of scale as more people know more about the advantages. With young children who are showing interest in engineering and space themselves, Bryant wants future generations to have the tools to progress Australia’s advanced composites ecosystem.
“We’re big fans of giving back – we want to teach high school and tertiary students about advanced composites and where the market is heading,” Bryant added. “We want to leave our footprint here in Australia. I would love to have the legacy of being an organisation who reinvests into the future of students regardless of backgrounds. We want to make opportunities for everybody.”