Vertical Aerospace has opened a dedicated Aircraft Assembly Centre at Cotswold Airport in Gloucestershire, creating the company’s first UK manufacturing base for its Valo eVTOL programme. The refurbished site adds 60,000 square feet to the campus, taking the footprint to about 130,000 square feet, and will handle certification-conforming aircraft, a hybrid-electric demonstrator and early customer deliveries after certification.
The opening forms the first stage of Vertical’s wider manufacturing scale-up. The company plans to announce a separate full-scale production site for higher-volume output in the fourth quarter of 2026, while the new centre is expected to support more than 25 Valo aircraft a year in early production. Assembly of the first certification-conforming aircraft is due to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027, with type certification targeted for 2029.
Vertical invested £1.5 million in the refurbishment and will also open an expanded Vertical Energy Centre later this year, with plans to triple battery-production capacity over time. The Cotswold Airport operation brings together engineering, assembly, ground operations and flight testing, and integrates systems from Sonaca, Evolito and Honeywell Aerospace.