Robotic surgery group CMR urges more UK support for high-tech manufacturing

The chief executive of $3bn medical technology start-up CMR Surgical has called on the UK government to do more to support high-tech manufacturing, as it prepares to open a new factory outside Cambridge this year.

Per Vegard Nerseth, chief executive of the maker of robotic surgery devices, said he has told Boris Johnson, prime minister, that the UK will lose out on manufacturing investment if it fails to offer more incentives and make it an attractive place for talented staff from around the world.

CMR Surgical raised $600mn last year at a $3bn valuation from investors including Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. It is aiming to take on the dominant player, US company Intuitive Surgical. Sales of CMR’s Versius robotic surgery system rose 300 per cent last year.

Nerseth said the UK wanted to help the company establish a factory but there was little support from central government because most initiatives are regional.

“There was significantly more drive from some other parts of Europe to get us there, than there was here in the UK,” he said.

But he said CMR Surgical opted for the UK because it was important to have its facilities near its designers, who are based where the company was started in Cambridge.

The new factory, in the Cambridgeshire city of Ely, will employ up to 200 skilled staff manufacturing robotic systems that assist in keyhole surgery for hundreds of procedures, including urology and gynaecology. The production expansion is being overseen by chief operations officer Barrington D’Arcy, who previously developed manufacturing at rocket company SpaceX.

Nerseth is concerned the UK will become a less attractive place to study because of Brexit and will lose the benefit of foreign students remaining to work.

He added Brexit had also increased the time it takes to do paperwork at the border, with some processes that used to take two or three days sometimes taking a fortnight.

The global robotics surgery market is worth about $6bn and is growing at about 20 per cent a year, according to analytics firm Verified Market Research. But with robotic surgery representing only about 3 per cent of all operations and an even lower proportion in Europe, Nerseth thinks CMR is well positioned.

“There is a huge growth opportunity, which answers a little bit how a smaller British company that has been very successful can compete in the market against big players: because there is such a big demand,” he said.

CMR launched its first product in the second half of 2019, going from a “wooden prototype to operating on the first patient within five years”, he said.

But it had sold just a handful of systems before Covid-19 hit, disrupting its ability to sell to hospitals busy fighting the pandemic and forcing it to adapt, by for example, doing more remote training.

Now, CMR is juggling supply chain problems, including global shortages of electronics such as chips. “We have a relatively short horizon for how long we can continue without any disruption,” he said. “That short horizon has been there for the last 18 months, so we have been able to do it.”