SC Group (Supacat)

SC Group is the holding company behind Supacat, the Devon business whose high mobility vehicles carry British and allied special forces over ground that stops ordinary trucks. Home is Dunkeswell, a wartime airfield in east Devon, with further operations in Melbourne and Sydney. Four companies sit under the group. Supacat designs and builds military off-road vehicles, SC Innovation applies the same engineering to harsh-environment machinery outside defence, Proteum supplies and supports marine propulsion, and Blackhill Engineering handles heavy fabrication, machining and complex assembly.

Supacat is the reason most buyers know the name. Its High Mobility Transporter family gave the British Army the Jackal 4x4 and the larger Coyote 6x6, and the design has since gone to Australia, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. The current UK variant is Jackal 3, built on the HMT Extenda chassis that converts between four and six wheels, ordered under a 2023 contract for 70 vehicles and a follow-on in September 2024 for 53 more with Babcock as prime. Australia bought 89 Special Operations Vehicle Commando units under JP2097 Phase 1B. At DVD 2024 the company showed an Armoured Closed Cab HMT built to a generic vehicle architecture with a load bay rated above 3,500 kg, pitched at short range air defence, counter-drone, ambulance, recovery and command roles, alongside a smaller Light Mobility Vehicle for very high readiness units. Earlier platforms remain in service and still get supported, among them the 6x6 All Terrain Mobility Platform, the LRV 400 light reconnaissance vehicle and the SPV 400 protected patrol vehicle.

SC Innovation puts the same engineering to work on problems that have nothing to do with soldiering. Its best known job is the launch and recovery system that drives the RNLI Shannon class lifeboat into the surf from an unprepared beach and recovers it again. The team also runs the electric All Terrain Mobility Platform, now in a fourth generation, and sells concept work, mechanical design, analysis and validation, electrical engineering, product lifecycle management and technical publications as standalone services. Proteum covers a different market again. From the south coast it distributes and supports marine engines and drives across the UK and Ireland, including OXE Diesel outboards, FNM inboards and hybrids, BUKH engines for lifeboats and fast rescue craft, Masson Marine propulsion packages, Alamarin-Jet waterjets, Konrad stern drives and Glendinning engine controls. Blackhill Engineering, acquired at the end of 2014, works from four workshops on a two-acre Exeter site divided between fabrication, assembly and machine shops.

The stated purpose is protecting lives and protecting the planet, which in practice reads as a deliberate hedge. Defence vehicles pay the bills. Marine engines, lifeboat launchers, electric platforms and contract steelwork spread the risk into civil markets that move on a different cycle. Nick Ames has led the business since 2003, and Supacat itself dates to 1981, when it began with a small six-wheeled load carrier the British Army adopted as the ATMP and fields to this day.