Two young entrepreneurs have opened a new advanced manufacturing factory in Milton Keynes which will make precision components for aerospace, defence, and robotics customers including Anduril, Babcock, and Tekever.
Muhammad Altalib, 29, and Guglielmo Salvatore Pellegrino, 28, opened the facility under Isembard’s franchise model. The pair own and run the factory themselves, while Isembard provides the technology, training, brand, customers, and accreditation.
Before Isembard, Altalib founded Seedlink, a start-up backed by the University of Cambridge and Barclays. He later oversaw more than 100 early-stage investments as a venture capitalist. Convinced that decades of offshoring had weakened Britain’s manufacturing base, he approached Isembard’s founder, Alexander Fitzgerald, and the conversation quickly turned to how soon he could open a factory of his own.
Pellegrino founded Tie Cast, a start-up backed by University College London and the EU Horizon fund, which builds digital tools that make personalised orthodontic treatment more precise and up to five times cheaper, including by bringing manufacturing into the dental practice. A biomedical engineer by training, he now leads Isembard’s Milton Keynes factory as General Manager.
The 2,100 sq ft factory at Caxton Court on Garamonde Drive, Wymbush, was set up in just over three weeks and is already shipping parts to customers, with some of its first components bound for space. Its two computer-controlled cutting machines can make parts accurate to within a tenth of the thickness of a sheet of paper, with production managed through Isembard’s own software, MasonOS. The site represents an investment of around £750,000 and the entrepreneurs are already hiring machinists and programmers, with plans to grow to seven employees, 10 machines, and 10,000 sq ft over the next year.
Isembard chose Milton Keynes for its position at the centre of one of Britain’s densest advanced engineering clusters, with London, Oxford, and Cambridge within reach and a concentration of Formula 1, aerospace, energy, propulsion, and robotics companies across the surrounding region. Isembard believes the city can become the manufacturing centre for the research and engineering happening across that ecosystem.
The launch comes during Milton Keynes Tech Week (October 12-16), which is this year themed around sovereign technology. Altalib will lead a ‘Reindustrialise’ panel on Thursday, setting out what he sees as the start of a new era of industrial ambition for the UK, with Milton Keynes at its centre.
Milton Keynes is the latest of 15 Isembard factories across the UK, Europe, and the US, up from four at the start of 2026. Last month the company opened the largest factory in central London since WWII, and aims to reach 100 company-owned and franchisee factories across the UK by the end of 2028, creating 2,200 high-skilled jobs.
Muhammad Altalib, Isembard Milton Keynes, said: “After three decades of software abundance, we’re entering an era of hardware abundance, but you can’t copy and paste hardware. It takes an industrial base that can manufacture at scale, and that is what Britain needs to invest in now.
“We chose Milton Keynes because it sits between the research hubs of the Golden Triangle and the manufacturing heartlands of the Midlands, in the middle of Britain’s Formula 1 industry, where the people who know how to make highly complex components already work.
“Our ambition is to build manufacturing capacity that companies across defence, aerospace, energy, and advanced technology can rely on as they scale. Britain invented the Industrial Revolution, and we now have the chance to become the home of this new era of advanced manufacturing.”
Guglielmo Salvatore Pellegrino, Isembard Milton Keynes, said: “I’ve spent my career using technology to make personalised products available at scale and with a European supply chain, first in orthodontics and now in the aerospace industry. With modern machines and Isembard’s process, a small team here in Milton Keynes can make parts for some of the world’s most advanced engineering companies.”
Alexander Fitzgerald, Founder and CEO of Isembard, said: “Muhammad and Guglielmo are exactly the kind of people who will rebuild British manufacturing. Our franchise model opens factory ownership to a new generation of operators, and we want to find more of them in every town and city as we grow to 100 factories across the UK by 2028.”
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