Vertical Aerospace opened a new aircraft assembly centre on September 24, 2026, investing £1.5 million in a facility that adds 60,000 sq.ft. (5,574 sq. metres) of industrial space at its Flight Test Centre at Cotswold Airport in southwest England.

The expansion nearly doubles the footprint of the company's Cotswolds site to 130,000 sq.ft. (12,000 sq. metres). The assembly line will handle two aircraft types: certification-conforming examples of the VX4 maker's Valo eVTOL and a new hybrid-electric demonstrator.

The immediate purpose is regulatory. Aircraft assembled at the new facility will support the Valo's upcoming certification campaign with the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Only after that milestone is achieved will the site switch to building the first production aircraft for customer deliveries.

Capacity and scale-up plans

The Cotswolds line is rated for more than 25 Valo aircraft per year in the early stages of the programme's rollout. Vertical Aerospace has already made clear that this volume is an interim step: the company is evaluating other locations for a larger-scale production site and has secured UK government support to keep that future facility on British soil.

That commitment positions the UK as the manufacturing base for a programme whose demand case depends on cost per aircraft and delivery rate. A 25-aircraft annual capacity, while sufficient for certification-phase builds and initial deliveries, will constrain any rapid backlog conversion — a constraint the planned larger site is designed to remove.

Hybrid-electric demonstrator

The new centre will also assemble the first demonstrator aircraft to feature a new hybrid-electric propulsion architecture. Vertical Aerospace intends the configuration to extend the eVTOL's range and open the aircraft to new use cases, including military applications.

The move signals a broadening of the company's technical ambitions beyond the pure-electric urban air mobility mission, toward missions where battery-only endurance is the binding constraint.

Battery production in parallel

Alongside the assembly expansion, Vertical Aerospace is investing in an expansion of its Vertical Energy Centre near Bristol, which produces the battery systems fitted in the company's eVTOL aircraft. Coordinating cell and pack supply with airframe assembly capacity will determine whether the Cotswolds line can sustain its stated 25-aircraft rate once certification-conforming builds begin.

The facility opening marks the transition of the Valo programme from flight-test development toward certification-conforming production, with the CAA campaign now the gating milestone for first customer deliveries.