UK’s first ‘cloud-native manufacturing lab’ opens in London
31 January 2025 
A new laboratory in London is thought to be the UK’s first cloud-native facility dedicated to the manufacturing sector. Launched by the cloud engineering company Storm Reply with a six-figure investment, the lab will allow manufacturers to test technologies and create proof-of-concepts off-site, by recreating manufacturing lines virtually. Storm Reply says that this will help to avoid production downtime.
The lab’s initial customers have included Kingspan’s Insulated Panels division, Lowden Guitars, and the wire joining and tensioning specialist Gripple, which used the facility to help it to digitise its production lines.
The lab is offering a variety of industrial IoT (Internet of Things) services, such as producing line data for multiple sites to improve operational efficiency, and asset monitoring and predictive maintenance to help detect equipment problems. The lab’s team of 30 technology and manufacturing experts also develop digital twins and embed AI-powered vision systems on production lines to detect defects.
Storm Reply bases its bespoke systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS). The London office, located in Westminster, is one of a network of facilities in France, Germany, the US and Italy. The company’s headquarters are in a former Fiat factory in Turin.
Unlike other manufacturing R&D facilities which rely on hardware or SaaS (software as a service) technologies, Storm Reply’s lab is entirely cloud-native and is based on AWS.
“Stopping a line to test a new solution is problematic, so manufacturers understandably don’t like shutting down just to test,” says Storm Reply partner, Rachel Grunwerg. “We’ve developed this off-site approach because we wanted our customer projects to be efficient.”
“Previously manufacturers had to accept they don’t know how efficient their line is, or work on a gut feeling that they’re at capacity – but data eliminates that guesswork,” adds another Storm Reply partner, Matt Mould.
“Manufacturers are understandably wary of being locked into tech solutions, or projects which take years,” he continues. “So, they like that the solutions we create aren’t SaaS products, and that they’re owned by them not us. We’re just as happy working on a week-long project as a multi-year one, which global consultancies wouldn’t even consider.”
