By Mike Stone

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) - Divergent Technologies is opening a factory in Long Beach, California, that the company says will produce roughly 20,000 long-range munitions structures annually, as the Pentagon pushes to accelerate weapons manufacturing.

The announcement comes as the company also named Ben Nicholson, formerly chief business officer at Ursa Major, a startup focused on rocket propulsion systems for missiles and launch vehicles, as its new chief commercial officer.

In an interview with Reuters on Monday, CEO Lukas Czinger said the 430,000 square-foot (39,900 square-meter) facility will house 64 of the company's newly developed Monolith One 3D printers, each capable of producing around 300 munitions structures per year, representing an eightfold increase over the company's current output.

Divergent said it is involved with roughly a dozen cruise missile programs. Its Rapidly Adaptable Affordable Cruise Missile, developed with CoAspire, is the first tip-to-tail 3D printed metal airframe to reach high-rate production, with hundreds of miles of range and more than 100 pounds (45 kg) of payload capacity.

Divergent is also under contract with RTX's RTX.N Raytheon unit and the Navy on components for the Tomahawk cruise missile, which the Pentagon is targeting for production of 1,000 units per year, and with Lockheed Martin LMT.N on its Replicator autonomous drone program.

Founded in 2014, Divergent built its early reputation supplying lightweight structural components to high-end automakers including McLaren and Aston Martin, and three years ago pivoted into defense.

Demand for defense products has surged since the conflict with Iran, pushing the company to rapidly scale its manufacturing footprint. Czinger said the company's machines can be adapted to produce virtually any product, a flexibility he believes positions Divergent well should demand for munitions eventually slow.

The Long Beach facility is expected to create about 1,000 jobs at full capacity.

Last year the company raised $290 million at a valuation of $2.3 billion, in a round led by Rochefort Asset Management that included $250 million in equity and $40 million in debt, with proceeds earmarked to accelerate construction of its production facilities.