3,000 Laminations Reveal Where Birmingham Can Win in Electric Vehicles

Birmingham manufacturer Brandauer has secured £199,500 to develop a more repeatable way of producing bonded lamination stacks for electric motors. The sum is modest beside battery plants and vehicle programmes. Yet the work, announced this week, gets closer to the commercial constraint that will determine whether the West Midlands captures lasting value from electrification.

A single stack contains more than 3,000 ultra-thin sheets of electrical steel. Its accuracy affects motor performance, efficiency and durability. Brandauer’s 12-month project with Warwick Manufacturing Group is intended to reduce inconsistency, identify faults earlier and make the process transferable to higher-volume production.

That is not a story about a factory simply entering a fashionable market. It is about turning a capability into evidence that a demanding customer can buy.

The distinction matters. Britain’s automotive supply chain may have a sizeable opening as manufacturers seek more domestic content: SMMT forecasts an 80% rise in demand for UK-sourced automotive parts by 2030, with demand for electric motors, power electronics and drive systems expected to grow by more than 350%. But aggregate demand does not automatically create orders for a Birmingham supplier. Buyers still need confidence in cost, repeatability, lead times and the ability to scale without surprises.

The buyer is purchasing proof, not promise

Lamination stacks are a useful illustration of why the EV supply-chain conversation needs more precision. A component can be technically necessary and still be commercially difficult. Thin electrical steel brings manufacturing challenges around punching accuracy, handling, burr control, bonding and inspection. When defects appear late, the loss is not confined to material: it includes tooling time, labour, energy and the capacity consumed across each previous production step.

For a vehicle manufacturer or Tier 1 supplier, a prospective component partner is therefore not selling an interesting process alone. It is selling confidence that the process will continue to work at the required volume, against agreed specifications and within a viable unit cost.

This is why the stated focus on earlier fault detection is commercially significant. Better detection can reduce scrap, but its larger value is informational. It tells both supplier and customer where variation enters the process, whether it can be controlled, and what production conditions are needed before a programme is committed.

Such evidence is often less visible than a new production line or a major vehicle launch. It is nevertheless the work that makes a supplier credible to customers whose own reputations depend on quality and delivery.

Birmingham has a route through its existing capabilities

The announcement also says something useful about the region’s position in electric vehicles. The most credible opportunities are not limited to attracting a flagship final-assembly project. They include helping established specialist firms adapt a proven capability to the needs of new products.

Brandauer already works in precision metal stamping and tooling, and has been developing electrical-steel laminations for electrification applications. The company’s existing automotive experience, alongside diversification into aerospace, defence and drone-related work, gives it a base from which to test adjacent markets rather than attempting an unsupported leap.

That pattern is important for the wider West Midlands. The region has an unusually dense mix of engineering businesses, automotive know-how and applied research. WMG’s involvement is not simply a badge for the project. It gives a manufacturer access to testing and process expertise that can shorten the distance between a promising method and a production proposition that customers can evaluate.

The Advanced Propulsion Centre has identified both technical and supply-chain innovation as necessary to expand UK electric-machine production. In practice, that requires closer collaboration at the awkward point between laboratory performance and factory consistency: where a process must accommodate materials, tolerances, throughput, maintenance and inspection without making the finished part unaffordable.

Demand is real, but it is not evenly distributed

There is a temptation to treat forecasts for electric drivetrains as a blanket guarantee of local growth. They are not. UK vehicle production remained under pressure in the first half of 2026, even as exports strengthened, and model transitions can quickly alter the timing and specification of component demand.

Nor is this grant evidence of a confirmed high-volume vehicle order. Brandauer’s project is due to finish in May 2027. Its purpose is to establish a scalable route to competing for future contracts. That is a worthwhile outcome, but it should be described accurately.

For Birmingham and the West Midlands, the commercial challenge is to make these development projects legible to the market. A manufacturer needs to know which customers it is built for: high-volume passenger vehicles, commercial fleets, specialist vehicles, or other electrical-machine applications. It also needs a clear answer on what buyers gain beyond local proximity. That could be faster iteration, more dependable quality data, lower waste, flexible tooling or a more responsive engineering relationship.

Those are propositions that can be tested with customers early, rather than assumed from market forecasts.

The regional measure should be conversion

The best test of this project will not be the grant announcement or even the technical demonstration. It will be whether Brandauer can translate improved process knowledge into qualified opportunities and repeat business.

That calls for a sharper set of regional measures than the number of firms supported. Useful indicators would include customer trials converted, defects found before final assembly, first-pass yield, production lead time, viable batch sizes and orders won after the project ends. These measures connect innovation support to the decisions buyers actually make.

Birmingham’s advantage is not that it can claim a role in electric vehicles. It is that firms with long-standing production knowledge can make exacting components for an expanding market. The work now is to demonstrate that this capability is dependable enough to become part of a customer’s next programme.