Verve Aero is flying high at Mamhilad Park Estate

With independent reports suggesting that there will be over 900,000 drones operating in the UK by 2030, the sky has no limit for Verve Aero, a Gwent business that specialises in composite airframes for UAVs and drones. 

Based at Mamhilad Park Estate, Verve Aero designs, develops, and manufactures high quality off the shelf and bespoke fully composite structures and components for remotely piloted aircraft. The company also has its own test site, plus access to experienced UAV pilots for testing and evaluation.

Work carried out by Verve Aero includes a wide variety of airframes from their in-house designed 5.3m span twin engine UAV for heavy lift long distance duties such as humanitarian aid delivery to  drones for use in the defence sector and even large scale models for the film industry.

It is estimated that drones could contribute up to £45bn to the UK economy by 2030 while reducing carbon emissions by 2.4 million tons, equivalent to removing 1.7 million cars from the road for a year but it was a love of model airplanes that first inspired Paul Lewis to set-up Verve Aero. He said: “Our aim is to provide customers with the ideal platform for their projects and drones can offer a faster, safer, cheaper, and more environmentally friendly solution than full size aviation

“Our customers come to us with anything from an idea or a quick sketch to a fully formed CAD design and then we use several different methods to design and build the airframes here at Mamhilad. We love our characterful building, and our facilities are superb with our purpose-built moulding rooms and large manufacturing space allowing for both rapid prototyping and series production’’

​Peter Downes is Operations Manager for Johnsey Estates UK Limited, owners of Mamhilad Park Estate. He said: “From R&D and manufacturing companies to tech spin outs and well-being practitioners, we have a huge variety of different businesses based here at Mamhilad. It is great to see Verve Aero doing so well as they capitalise on the growing market for drones – and this is another example of how we can adapt the buildings here to accommodate specialist requirements.”