Transcription of The Stock Network Interview with FBR (ASX:FBR), CEO Mark Pivac
Lel Smits: Robotic technology company FBR is advancing its Mantis high deposition welding robot which is now commissioned and undergoing trials ahead of factory acceptance testing. With its first unit pre-sold to the US and a new North American distribution partnership in place, Mantis is moving closer to commercial deployment and a potentially significant new market opportunity. Ahead of appearing at Stoxx on location, I’m joined by FBR’s CEO Mark Pibback to discuss Mantis, the North American opportunity and the next phase of FBR’s robotics growth.
Mark, welcome back to The Stock Network.
Mark Pivac: Thanks, good to be here.
Lel Smits: Great to have you on and keen to understand more as you’re moving towards commercialisation, Mantis is now undergoing welding trials ahead of factory acceptance testing with the first unit already pre-sold to the US.
What are the key milestones from here, Mark? And also can you give us an idea of how close Mantis is to that commercial deployment?
Mark Pivac: Yeah, so Mantis is getting very close to commercial deployment. The factory acceptance test is a key milestone because it demonstrates all of the working features of Mantis and then we will be further developing even more features, but this is the set that’s required for the first job and the first customer. And once that’s passed, it shows that we meet the AWS D1.1 standard, which is very widely used in the US and is a very important standard to meet.
And as soon as we’ve done that, we’ll be doing some demonstrations and sales work here with a number of Australian and other global shipyards who’ll be coming in to see Mantis in action. And then it will be heading across to the US for further demonstration and actual use over there as well.
Lel Smits: Brilliant. And in terms of unlocking that North American market, you have appointed a North American distributor for Mantis, which of course opened up a pathway into that industrial fabrication and shipbuilding. But how significant do you think the market could be for FBR? And also, Mark, what’s the strategy here for really turning this opportunity into a broader commercial adoption?
Mark Pivac: Yeah, so Mantis came about because we were looking for a large welding robot to build our large robots. That’s what FBR does.
And there’s not really anything in the market. We’ve been able to leverage our core dynamic stabilisation technology, which is also used in the Hadrian bricklaying robot. And what this opens up is the possibility to build extremely large welding robots, which have a lot of application in the shipbuilding, the defence, the naval industries, and also for mining and general heavy fabrication, such as pressure vessels.
And there are thousands, if not tens of thousands of fabrication workshops around the world that are looking for this kind of technology. Most of these workshops are already automated with smaller equipment, and they’ve basically automated everything that they can. And Mantis offers a really good alternative that’s available now.
And, you know, we don’t have to wait for humanoid robots to get worked out. And Mantis has a lot of advantages over Cobots and other smaller welding robots, which are already used.
Lel Smits: Well, Mark, I appreciate the update from FBR. I look forward to hearing more when you’re on stage at Stocks on Location.
Mark Pivac: We’re looking forward to it.
Ends