Fanuc to open dedicated robotics facility in Ireland  

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.

“Ireland doesn’t have a traditional industrial background in, for example, automotive manufacture but we make a lot of agricultural machinery, and the country has established a global reputation in pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food and beverage, medical devices, computers, electronics and engineering. SMEs account for a significant proportion in those key sectors,” explained Conor. 

The company has several hundred robots already installed in Ireland and the new facility at Maynooth means that technical support will now also be available to businesses that may have bought Fanuc equipment through integrators outside the previous network. “We are now much better placed to provide effective support to our existing customers in Ireland,” says Conor.

The opportunity is there for Irish manufacturers to increase their competitiveness, both domestically and internationally. “However, in order to maximise this, the next step is most definitely around automation. It is essential to competitiveness,” Conor said.

“If a foreign-owned plant in this country is up against a sister plant elsewhere in the world for the next generation of a product it is already making, the efficiency achieved through automation will be essential to winning the business and keeping it under their roof.”

The company recognises the importance of education and training to the future that Ireland and its businesses want to embrace. As well as providing on-site training at larger customers’ facilities and at the new offices in Maynooth, it is continuing to work closely with Ireland’s higher education network, including the Technical Universities, and with manufacturers’ apprenticeship programmes.

“The indicators are very strongly pointing towards more investment in manufacturing equipment in Ireland,” says Conor. “The country’s technologically advanced, efficient and competitive future manufacturing sector and its supply chain is one that Fanuc Ireland will be at the heart of.”