Robotic bricklaying company floats on the ASX
Fastbrick Robotics (FRB), the company that developed Hadrian, the bricklaying robot that can build a house in two days, has floated on the ASX today. Cygnet Capital raised $5.75m ahead of the public float. Currently, it takes humans between 4-6 weeks to lay bricks for a house, as humans usually work restricted hours. Hadrian is capable of operating 24/7, laying 1000 bricks an hour, and building up to around 150 houses a year, putting human brick laying jobs at risk in the future. Mark Pivac, the inventor and engineer of the technology, said Fastbrick Robotics has had inquires from 39 different countries, and is in discussion with a few large companies.

THIS is the robot bricklayer that is putting WA on the building map around the world with inquiries from 39 countries already.

Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) began trading on the ASX after Cygnet Capital raised $5.75 million ahead of Wednesday morning’s public float.

Perth inventor and engineer Mark Pivac said the next big thing in the development phase was to build a room-size structure on the company’s factory site early next year.

“Our next prototype, the Hadrian 109, will be out hopefully working on-site in the next 18 months,” Mr Pivac said.

As of Wednesday, there were a small amount of overseas holdings in the company, but the majority of shareholders were West Australian, he said.

“We’ve already had inquiries from 39 different countries into the technology and we’re in discussions with some large companies,” Mr Pivac said.

“The market is truly massive. You’re talking really, really big numbers of bricks that get laid around the world, and we think we can lay a reasonable proportion of those.”

The engineer said there was some competition in brick automation but “we really think they’ve missed the point”.

Camera Icon Inventor of the world's first "brickbot", Mark Pivac of Fastbric Robotics. Credit: Supplied

“There’s one that is a semi-automated mason, it’s just a little robot that goes along and builds wall by wall and you have to set it up each wall, and it needs people to load the bricks, and have someone to mix the cement for it, etc.

“Whereas our machine is a complete end-to-end system. The house is designed on the computer, and then the machine is brought to site, the bricks loaded on, and then Hadrian cuts them to length, feeds them out, lays them and applies adhesive.

“It does the whole job basically.”

The robot works 20 times faster than humans, can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and can build a house in two days.