A lack of support from the Ministry of Defence has seen a manufacturer forced to cut its workforce from 36 to just six because it can’t get its products to market.
Cubewano, based in Sutton Coldfield, which has 11 patents for its engine and military generators, has been forced to sell valuable designs to foreign firms because it can’t access enough support in the UK.
It has seen its workforce depleted in just nine months as a result.
Founder Craig Fletcher said there was a danger of intellectual property (IP) developed in the UK being sold to foreign-owned defence conglomerates.
While there are grants available from the MoD to carry out research and development and secure further patents, there is no support to take the designs to production stage.
He has now met Sutton Coldfield MP and Cabinet Minister Andrew Mitchell to ask him to lobby the Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology – Peter Luff, MP for Mid-Worcestershire – to provide more backing to firms looking to supply the MoD.
Mr Fletcher said he was seeking an order from the MoD or a foreign military to get the firm’s Hornet generator range from prototype to production and warned the difficulty for defence suppliers to get products to market meant the UK has to buy back finished products at an inflated price.
Mr Fletcher said: “Our company is at a crossroads. Tooling to bring Hornet into production will cost hundreds of thousands of pounds, so we now need to decide how we fund this.
“We must now look to one of the larger players in the defence industry to either partner with or sell our IP completely so they can invest in productionisation and provide a procurement pipeline into the military.
“We have already had interest from major defence players in the USA and India who want to acquire our patents wholesale. However. this would come at an unfortunate production and intellectual cost to both the region and the UK.
"Perversely, once the product is in production we know it will be demanded by our own armed forces.
“However they will in all likelihood be purchasing a product manufactured abroad with profit on British-developed IP passing to a foreign defence behemoth rather than an innovative hi-tech innovator right here in the Midlands.
