Facility is designed to assemble more than 25 Valo aircraft annually during early production
Vertical Aerospace, a global aerospace and technology company pioneering electric aviation, announced the opening of a dedicated Aircraft Assembly Centre at its Flight Test Centre at Cotswold Airport.
The opening ceremony, which took place on National Manufacturing Day in the UK, delivers on a previously announced milestone and marks the next stage in the Company’s transition from prototype development and flight testing towards certification and commercial production of its Valo electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.
Supported by a £1.5 million investment, the new Centre adds 60,000 square feet of operational and aircraft assembly space to Vertical’s existing Cotswold Airport campus. Combined with the Company’s Flight Test Centre, Vertical now operates approximately 130,000 square feet at the airport across engineering, aircraft assembly, ground operations and flight-test activities.
A staged approach to manufacturing scale-up
The Aircraft Assembly Centre is the first stage of Vertical’s planned manufacturing scale-up. It provides the capacity required to build certification-conforming aircraft, which will be used for compliance demonstration and verification testing as Vertical works with the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) towards its target of achieving Type Certification in 2029. Assembly of the first certification-conforming aircraft is expected to begin in Q4 2027.
The Centre will also be used to retrofit one of the Company’s prototype aircraft for hybrid-electric flight testing in the first half of 2027. The UK Ministry of Defence recently confirmed its interest in Vertical’s hybrid-electric and autonomous capabilities.
Following certification, the Centre is expected to support Vertical’s initial customer deliveries with capacity to assemble more than 25 Valo aircraft annually during the early-production phase.
Higher-volume manufacturing will be carried out at a separate, full-scale production facility, plans for which Vertical expects to announce in the fourth quarter of 2026.