Sarginsons secures £650K UK government grant for near-zero carbon foundry
What's the deal? Coventry-based aluminium foundry Sarginsons IndustriesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → has secured £650,000 in government funding to develop Future Foundry — what it calls the world's first near-zero carbon casting hub. The money will fund a feasibility study for scaling up operations with next-generation, low-carbon, digitally enabled manufacturing equipment.
The funding comes from the UK government's £4B DRIVE35 programme, delivered by the Department for Business and TradeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → alongside the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) UKDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Innovate UK.
The feasibility study is scheduled to run until January 2027, with a follow-on scale-up project expected to be worth roughly £20M. The proposed upgrades aim to quadruple production capacity and support zero-carbon casting at scale.
Why now? Sarginsons has spent more than five years developing proprietary technology that lets it predict exactly how an aluminium casting will perform at any point in its structure. It says it is the only foundry globally able to help OEMs simulate, optimise, and virtually crash-test aluminium castings using variable mechanical properties.
The company is also the lead partner in the government's PIVOT (Performance Integrated Vehicle Optimisation Technology) programme, developing a stronger-but-lighter recycled aluminium alloy and advanced casting design software. Together, these innovations could cut the carbon footprint of structural castings by over 90%.
What could go wrong? The £650K covers only a feasibility study — the real test will be whether the £20M scale-up project materialises and delivers on its promises. Quadrupling production capacity with unproven manufacturing processes carries execution risk, and commercial adoption by automotive OEMs is never guaranteed, no matter how compelling the technology.
The signal: Sarginsons is a mature business with over 80 years in aluminium diecasting, making this less a startup bet and more a government-backed industrial upgrade — the kind of patient, strategic funding the DRIVE35 programme was designed for. With APC UK operating as an investment fund and Innovate UK channelling government and non-profit capital, the deal underscores Whitehall's willingness to de-risk scale-up costs for legacy manufacturers that can demonstrate genuine decarbonisation potential in hard-to-abate sectors.
Read more: theengineer.co.uk
