FBR shares up 20% on Brickworks JV

FBR, formerly known as Fastbrick Robotics, has commenced a 50/50 joint venture with Brickworks, called Fastbrick Australia, to provide a ‘Wall as a Service' offering to the Australian market.

Under the joint venture, Brickworks will supply specially optimised bricks and FBR will use its fully-automated Hadrian X bricklaying robot to construct a completed wall which will then be sold to its customers who operate in the Australian residential construction market.

Shares in FBR surged 20.55 per cent to trade at 8.8 cents each at 12.30pmAEDT on announcement of the joint venture.

In a statement, FBR said it has already received the first shipment of concrete masonry blocks from Brickworks, and operations would commence shortly.

FBR chief executive Mike Pivac said he was very pleased to have a joint venture partner of Brickworks’ calibre.

“Fastbrick Australia provides FBR with an opportunity in Australia to demonstrate the capabilities of the Hadrian X with the new optimised blocks developed with Brickworks and also to demonstrate and test our business model for the commercialisation of Wall as a Service, which we intend to scale on a global basis,” he said.

“We are looking forward to commencing our first builds on residential sites with the Hadrian X.”

In December, Caterpillar terminated its memorandum of understanding for it to build and distribute FBR’s robot bricklaying machines worldwide.