Lorica Research Limited is a private self-funded Company incorporated in 1995 by Digby Dyke and is owned by Digby Dyke and Michael Riley. Digby started the business at his home in 1991 four years before incorporation and has been responsible for all the scientific research and development work of Lorica. He also has been responsible for conducting a number of body armour assessments and investigations in a variety of cases and incidents of false description and failure of operation. Before this Digby worked in the completely different field of safety-critical computer systems mainly for aerospace applications.

Michael invested in Lorica in 2001 and owns and runs a personal protective equipment business Jack Ellis Body Protection (more) manufacturing and distributing police and military body armour and body protectors for horse riders.

Key Lorica personnel include Robert Knight and Allison Lake.

Allison is an honours graduate in technical textiles science and is Lorica’s Senior Research & Development Officer focused on ballistic- and stab-resistant body armour.  Allison has worked as a technical designer, garment technologist and project manager in the clothing industry using a wide variety of textiles, textiles composites and finishes.  For two years before joining Lorica Allison was a technical designer of police and military body armour.

Lorica has achieved considerable success in the field of flexible penetration-resistant materials for use in body armour. These materials are resistant to the penetration of bullets, fragments, knives, spikes and needles and are used throughout the world mainly in body armour for police tactical forces, anti-terrorist groups, Special Forces, the Press, the private security industry and government security services. The Company maintains an ongoing programme of research and development of protective materials aimed at weight and stiffness reduction and better performance.

Two licensees are appointed to manufacture and distribute Lorica materials. These are Royal Ten Cate bv (more) based in Europe and Barrday Inc (more) based in North America. The materials are sold to body armour manufacturers.

Lorica is an ISO9001 accredited company and Lorica’s training courses are accredited by Skills For Security (more) the skills and standards setting body for the UK Security Business Sector.

Lorica is based in the UK at the former barracks and shooting ranges of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Forrester’s Regiment, but operates in all parts of the world.