Composites World Magazine

A Sikorsky Fire Hawk helicopter begins production at PZL Mielec in Poland. Source | PZL Mielec In a milestone for European aerial firefighting and emergency response, PZL Mielec  (Mielec, Poland), a Lockheed Martin company, has commenced production of Europe’s first Sikorsky S-70 Firehawk helicopters. The aircraft are being manufactured for the Czech Republic Ministry of the Interior through a partnership with Česká letecká servisní (ČLS), a Helicopter Alliance (HA) company and United Rotorcraft.

Lamilux manufactures fiberglass panel (left is just an example) to serve the recreational vehicle industry (top right) and hygiene industries, like the HAUBIS project. Sources  | Lamilux (left, bottom right), Getty Images (top right) Lamilux Composites GmbH (Rehau, Germany) is a family-run business whose glass fiber- reinforced polymer (GFRP) material offerings are serving vehicles, hygienic wall and ceiling cladding, and temperature-controlled transport applications.

Source | ACM CRC A University of Queensland (UQ, Australia) project, supported by the Australian Composites Manufacturing CRC (ACM CRC, Sydney), is developing more durable sucker rod guides (SRGs) for Oilfield Piping Systems (OPS, Brisbane City, Australia). Sucker rods are critical components in artificial lift systems in the oil and gas industry — specifically sucker rod pumps used in wells. Sucker rod guides protect rods by minimizing metal-to-metal contact between them and tubing.

Source | Getty Images Kingboard Holdings Ltd. (Hong Kong) has commissioned a new electronic-grade glass fiber yarn production line in Shaoguan, Guangdong province, China, with an annual capacity of 70,000 tonnes, according to a recent report made by JEC Composites. The line, completed 3 months ahead of schedule, is one of several capacity expansions underway among East Asian glass fiber producers responding to the raw material demands of the AI server and data center buildout.

Source | Getty Images Saint-Gobain (Courbevoie, France) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a glass fiber plant located in Lexington, North Carolina, from Nippon Electric Glass’ Electric Glass Fiber America (EGFA) subsidiary.

Source | Syensqo Syensqo (Alpharetta, Ga., U.S.) announces its involvement in the U.S. Army’s MV-75 Cheyenne program, providing advanced composite materials, adhesives and specialty polymers for critical structural and rotorcraft components. Syensqo’s solutions are engineered to meet vertical lift platform lightweighting, durability and thermal resistance demands. The MV-75 Cheyenne platform, being developed by Bell Textron Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas, U.S.), a Textron Inc.

Source | Getty Images The development of a dedicated Eurocode for composite materials has been approved by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN, Brussels, Belgium), joining the existing set of 10 CEN standards that provide harmonized rules for the design of buildings and civil engineering works across the European Union (EU), supporting the wider acceptance of composite materials in the construction sector.

Source (All Images) | SHD Cambium (El Segundo, Calif., U.S.) has announced the next phase of expansion for its U.S. manufacturing base: a 60,000-square-foot facility in Mooresville, North Carolina. This expansion will quadruple the domestic production capacity of its SHD (Sleaford, U.K.) composites manufacturing division, which it acquired just over 6 months ago.

Source | Getty Images The European Rebar Council (ERC), a sectorial alliance of the European Composites Industry Association (EuCIA, Brussel, Belgium), has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NEx: An ACI Center of Excellence for Nonmetallic Building Materials (Farmington Hills, Mich., U.S.).

Source | NASA NASA has selected seven companies for contract awards under the Mars Exploration Program’s Science Transport and Robotic Innovation for Deployment and Exploration (STRIDE) initiative to advance next-gen commercial robotic surface mobility for future Mars exploration.