November 27, 2009
A National Composites Centre is to be set up in the south west of England, based on Bristol University. It is part of the UK Composites Strategy and will be supported with £16 m of public-sector investment comprising £12 m from the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (the Strategic Investment Fund announced in the last budget) and £4 m from the South West Regional Development Agency (SWRDA). Public-sector investment will be supplemented with contributions from international engineering companies.
     The centre will form an international hub, linking activities across all sectors of the UK in research, education and training, technology transfer and incubation of new enterprises. It is being based in the South West because of the region's association with carbon fibre composites and the presence of a number of end-users and exporters. It is estimated that in excess of £450 m has already been committed in composites-related investments from the public and private sectors in the region in the last six years.
     The commercial applications of research from the NCC will include wind-turbine blades, air frames, ship hulls, off-shore oil and gas platform repairs, building and construction, automotive body-shells and lightweight armour.
     SWRDA will oversee the construction of a 6,000 m² facility with workshop space, open-plan offices, meeting rooms and teaching facilities, in collaboration with the university and industry partners. These partners currently are Airbus, GKN, Rolls-Royce and Vestas of Denmark. The centre will be located in the Bristol area and will be operational by April 1, 2011. It will be close to GKN Aerospace's facility at Filton in Bristol, and around 80 miles from another GKN composites site at Cowes on the Isle of Wight – also on the Isle of Wight is the Vestas research facility, although the company has pulled out of wind turbine blade manufacture there. Filton, acquired from Airbus in January this year, is to be developed as GKN Aerospace's global centre of excellence in aero-structures.