JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #111 - March 2017 - Special JEC World - o - 24

BUSINESS carbon fibre

China's KDX starts its carbon fibre
lightweight value chain
Through joint efforts with German experts and industrial companies, the
Chinese group KDX created a platform covering the whole carbon fibre chain
and targeting the mainstream new energy automotive market.

K

angdexin
Composite
Material Group (KDX)
has recently been the object of numerous press articles
in the Chinese media. The privately-owned, Shenzhen-listed
group is pushed forward as a
flagship of the Chinese industry fully adhering to the 13th
Five-Year Plan's "New Materials,
Whole Industry and Great
Ecological Development" state
strategy.
Headed by Zhong Yu, KDX
has five business segments:
Laminating Film Materials,
Photoelectric Materials, Carbon
Fibre, New Smart Display and
Internet Applications. The
group, founded in 2001, now

counts more than 30 subsidiaries, nine R&D centres in eight
countries and a marketing network spreading to more than 80
countries and regions.
Sino-European cooperation
As for carbon materials, the
company has formed a partnership with the University of
Cambridge and is conducting
R&D on the application and
industrialization of graphene.
Jointly with its controlling
shareholder Kangde Investment
Group, KDX created an industry value chain for CFRP for
the mainstream market of new
energy automotive, achieving
the transfer from precursor to
carbon filament and then to the
R&D, design and production
of the whole CFRP industry
chain. So far, the platform an-

nounced having formed partnerships with 14 OEMs.

stop lightweight design solutions for Chinese OEMs.

The value chain is the result of
a joint effort between Chinese
and German industries. In
March 2015, the KDX Europe
Composites R&D Centre was
established by KDX, supported by the Institute for Carbon
Composites of the Technical
University of Munich. The centre focuses on the European
and Chinese markets to provide high-quality carbon fibre
research and development services.
In May 2015, KDX and
Forward Engineering GmbH
(former Roding Technology)
jointly established the KDXRoding Europe Automobile
Design Centre in Munich,
which mainly provides one-

Two major plants
In addition to the above-mentioned KDX Europe Composites
R&D Centre and KDX-Roding
Europe Automobile Design
Centre, the platform includes two
major plants: ZAX Technology
(ZAX) and Kangde Composites
(KDC), as well as mass production technical support from
Fritzmeier Group.
Opened in August 8, 2016 in
Langfang in the Chinese province of Hebei, ZAX announces
an annual production capacity of
5,100 tons of high-performance
carbon fibre - the largest capacity in China, providing reliable
and critical material support for
the industrial ecological platform.
Moreover, the KDC plant, core of
the value chain, has an annual capacity of 1.5 million CFRP parts.
Adopting new-generation techniques such as HP-RTM, surface
RTM and wet pressing, the new
plant offers a strong guarantee to
promote productivity for the new
energy automotive market.

The KDC China
plant is at the core
of KDX's CFRP
industry chain
(photo credit : KDX)

24

jec composites magazine / No111 March 2017

More information:
www.kangdegroup.com
http://www.kangdegroup.com
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