Ayodeji Ake
Arridex, formerly RusselSmith, has announced its formal change of name, registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission of Nigeria. The change reflects the significant expansion of the organisation’s capabilities and the breadth of industries it now serves, which extend well beyond the oil and gas services with which it began operations in the early 2000s.
Founded as an asset integrity company serving Nigeria’s oil and gas sector, the organisation has grown into a multi-sector industrial technology group operating across oil and gas, maritime, aerospace, defence, construction, and manufacturing. Its subsidiaries cover engineering and construction delivery, autonomous systems development, and advanced technology products, in addition to its industrial additive manufacturing and asset integrity operations.
The organisation holds Pioneer Status in additive manufacturing, granted by the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), and is the first company qualified by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) for additive manufacturing deployment in the oil and gas sector.
Both represent formal recognition of Arridex’s capabilities and its role in building indigenous industrial capacity at scale. With more than 20 years of continuous delivery, Arridex holds certification to ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 45001:2018, underpinning an integrated management system that governs its operations across all sectors, and has recorded zero lost time incidents across over seven million man hours of operations.
The name change coincides with a significant operational milestone. The Arridex Omnifactory, West Africa’s first multi-technology industrial additive manufacturing facility, will be inaugurated in Lagos in June 2026. The Omnifactory integrates multiple additive manufacturing technologies including Laser Powder Bed Fusion (L-PBF), Cold Spray, Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF), and Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) under one roof, enabling on-demand production of industrial components, spares, and improved part designs for critical industries. The Omnifactory’s large-format additive manufacturing capabilities also
enable the production of large-scale structures, including full-size marine components. Its inauguration is the clearest measure of the distance that Arridex has travelled from its origins.
Africa’s critical industries have for decades depended on components and specialist expertise imported from outside the continent, with supply chains that routinely extend across multiple jurisdictions and lead times that affect operational continuity for asset owners when dealing with legacy parts.
The Omnifactory manufactures industrial components and parts on demand in Lagos, helping to build operational resilience in critical industries.
Group Chief Executive Officer of Arridex, Kayode Adeleke, said: “The name RusselSmith defined what we were at the start. Arridex defines what we have built. The dependency of African industry on fragile supply chains is a structural problem that this continent has accepted for too long. The Omnifactory is a concrete answer to the challenge of
manufacturing sovereignty. Arridex is the name of the company built over two decades and raised intentionally to enable industrial resilience in Africa.
Arridex is a Designated Strategic Partner of the Commonwealth Enterprise and Investment Council (CWEIC) and serves clients across Nigeria and the wider African region. The organisation has a joint venture partnership with the Defence Industries Corporation of
Nigeria (DICON) for military-grade additive manufacturing, is a member of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) and is also a member of the Defence Industries Association of Nigeria (DIAN). With the Omnifactory inauguration in June 2026, Arridex enters its next phase of operations under a name that reflects the full scope of what it has built.
