Roughly a year after Fanuc announced plans to establish a new robotics centre in Ireland staffed by a dedicated team and full local representation, the new facility in Maynooth, Co Kildare will open for business later this summer.
“We announced that we planned to have an initial team of five and here we are, as promised,” said Conor O’Kelly, one of two Ireland-based sales managers now in place; the other is Ronan Rasdale. Two service engineers and a technical support engineer complete the team.
There have been plans for an Irish subsidiary of Fanuc Europe for a while and the impact of Covid-19 and the restrictions on international travel simply accelerated them.
“Previously, our Irish customers would have had to travel to Coventry in England, but we can now offer organised, in-house training for our larger customers and scheduled courses catering for smaller groups, from our dedicated Irish facility here in Maynooth,” continued Conor. “In addition, the showroom at our new headquarters will be stocked with robots for demonstration, evaluation and test purposes.”
Its launch is well-timed, coinciding with the implementation of the Irish Government’s wider industrial strategy. Ireland currently lags behind the European average in robot penetration, with the second-lowest robot density in the EU15 in 2019. However, the Irish Government’s strategy is that, by 2025, Ireland will be a competitive, innovation-driven manufacturing hub and at the forefront of Industry 4.0 development and adoption.