Are you ready to roll?

The racy, low quantity, quick turnaround part manufacture of motorsport has been getting the composites manufacturing sector quickly off the grid for some time now with small, niche subcontractors always on high alert around our motorsport valley.

The aerospace industry – a pioneering composites user – woke up, got out of bed, and dressed in its sharpest suit, placed huge orders for carbon fibre civil aircraft wingskins and aerostructures a long, long time ago.

Driven by the same environmental lightweighting transport demands, is the automotive industry about to give its composites supply chain an almighty wake-up call?

There is the inviting prospect that mass-produced, affordable small- to medium-sized family cars of the future will include increasing amounts of carbon fibre/hybrid advanced material constructions, built in production volumes that will make civil aircraft numbers look like small fry in comparison.

In handling low volume, high value composite part production, most subcontracting companies can whack rocks all day, but roll some high volume, fast production rate marbles at them and they soon turn into human roller skates.

Someone will talk confidently about the UK composites industry’s ability to take on this work, whilst those within the automotive sector will listen in a slightly perplexed silence until they’ve finished. Then, after a long pause someone might be tempted to reply: “That’s nice, dear.”

It still requires a serious rethink how the composites manufacturing industry will keep pace with the automotive industry’s high production rate demands. The manufacturing potential in increasing state-of-the-art automation techniques represents a way forward. Is UK industry ready and who’s up for the challenge?

Mike Richardson, editor