Solvay and Airborne have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at JEC World 2019. Solvay’s leadership in composite materials and processes for structural applications and Airborne’s expertise in automated engineering processes and digital systems will help identify solutions to the industrialisation challenges facing the composites industry.

Industrialising the generation of tailored prepreg layups and forming technologies for high volume applications is a significant challenge for the composites industry and the companies aim to bring together digitisation, automation and state of the art materials and processes to bridge from industrial to high-performance high-volume applications, the companies said in a joint press release.

“Solvay sees great potential in this collaboration with Airborne - our companies have got unique synergies and the same focus on developing industrialisation solutions to meet increasing production rates” said Rob Blackburn, application engineering director at Solvay composite materials global business unit.

“It’s an honour to work with one of the world’s leading material science companies. To truly drive innovation in composites, we firmly believe it is vital to collaborate throughout the value chain, enabling the development of materials, processes and automation to go hand-in-hand. If we follow such a holistic approach, great breakthroughs are possible,” said Marcus Kremers, CTO at Airborne. (PC)