A three-year project, led by Cytec Industrial Materials (Heanor / UK; www.cytec.com) and engineering researcher Axillium (Daventry / UK; www.axillium.com), has been recently launched in the UK to support and boost its composites industry. The Composites Innovation Cluster (CiC, Hemel Hempstead; www.the-cic.org) has been awarded over GBP 11m in a second round of funding from the UK government’s Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) which has been set up to help existing UK supply chains grow and achieve world-class standards, while also encouraging major new suppliers to manufacture in the country.

CiC, which is also endorsed by the UK’s National Composites Centre (Bristol; www.nccuk.com), will deliver 13 projects across 25 partners from the first quarter of 2013. The aim is to support the delivery of a national network of knowledge and technology providers in composite materials that will enable the design and manufacture of lightweight vehicles, structures and devices that would otherwise be undertaken overseas.

The cluster has received funding of more than GBP 22m in total to strengthen the UK composites supply chain, develop business growth to the value of GBP 190m and create or safeguard more than 200 jobs. A UK consortium was set up in mid-2012 to examine the potential for using high-performance composites in automotive applications – see Plasteurope.com from 21.06.2012.