JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #99 - September 2015 - 5

yourself or will you purchase
it?

S. F. : We recently expanded

our facility in South Carolina.
We are now considering our
next carbon fibre investments
both in terms of where they
will be located and product
forms: we are looking at
expanding carbon fibre for
aerospace, but also large-tow
carbon fibre for industrial
markets.
For large-tow precursor, we
are considering multiple
options. We have an ongoing
collaboration with Dralon, a
German company, to study
the option of doing it together,
and we also are looking at
doing it ourselves. A lot
of precursor production is
already in place within acrylic
producers, who are looking
for new revenues and consider
carbon fibre as a value added
opportunity.

JCM: For carbon fibre, will you
extend the agreement you have
with Jaguar Land Rover?

S. F. : This agreement enables
us to collaborate with their
design and engineering people
to build prototype vehicles for
larger volume applications.
This is what we call "Serial
Auto", meaning cars which

are built in the range of ten
thousand units per year. And
Jaguar, like many other OEMs
across Europe, are now looking at industrial carbon fibre;
not just for individual parts
but in a large way to achieve
significant vehicle weight
reduction. We are working in
collaboration with some of
the OEMS, as is the case with
JLR.
JCM: Where do you think the
automotive carbon fibre market
is the largest? In the US or in
Europe?

S. F. : This market is much

larger in Europe. Europe is
certainly ahead of the US in
terms of adopting carbon fibre
broadly. In the US, there was
a start of activities in the last
couple of years but I would say
Europe has been working on
programmes for 5 to 10 years.
The BMWi3 has been on the
market for a few years now.
There is more interest and
more investment in Europe.
Moreover, the CO2 limitation
is more stringent in Europe
than in the US. That's a big
part of the deal.
Today in the US, the impulse
is not there. The changes in
the US legislation are not always consistent. For example,

Fig. 1: Opening of the new kitting site in Toulouse, France

Fig. 2: Robotic pick and place enabling single minutes Takt time.

the production tax credit issue
for wind energy, which drives
a lot of investment decisions,
is renewed every year. The
auto industry will wait until
there is less uncertainty in
those requirements; then
they will start to make the
announcements. Moreover,
in the US, you don't have the
same regulations across the
country.

this investment is that we see
automotive as a market that
can grow rapidly in the coming years, starting at the higher
end with a price point of
several hundred thousands of
dollars and ultimately getting
down to something that most
people can afford.

JCM: What do you think about
the future of automotive carbon
fibre?

S. F. : It is a very exciting

S. F. : Today, the business in-

volves relatively small volumes
with primarily motorsports
and really high-end supercars.
These two segments are the
largest part of our structural materials business. It is a
relatively small market but we
have a large market share. We
have a lot history, a long-term
relationship with customers,
and we hope to use this as a
springboard into these larger
OEM opportunities. The
Umeco acquisition meant that
we now have a very strong
presence in supercars with a
broader product line and an
opportunity to getting closer
to reality. The reason we made
No99 September 2015 /

JCM: Is there anything you
would like to say to the composite community?

time to be in composites. We
are reaching a point where we
are starting to see the industrialization of carbon fibre
composites. And the market,
I think, will grow rapidly in a
number of different segments.
Our focus today is the legacy
business in the aerospace area
but as we look for new opportunities, automotive is going
to be the exciting market to focus on. There is a huge amount
of investment by OEMs, tier
ones, part designers, engineering companies and composite
suppliers themselves to make
this a reality, to reduce cycle
times, and to get the first time
right and perfectly finished. n
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