FUSION Issue 3-2026 DIGITAL - Flipbook - Page 8
COMPOSITES
The composites
industry proved
what its materials
can do. Now it has
to prove it can
make them at scale.
The Scale
For decades, the composites industry
has been extraordinarily good at
one thing: proving what its materials
can do. Lighter aircraft. Stronger
hulls. More efficient wind turbines.
Faster racing cars. The evidence is
everywhere, and it is compelling. The
argument for composites has long
since been won.
So why, at JEC World 2026, the industry's
largest annual gathering, was the dominant
conversation not about materials at all?
The answer is simple, and rather uncomfortable.
The composites industry has a scale problem.
Not an innovation problem. Not a materials
problem. A manufacturing problem. And it is one
that no amount of new resin chemistry or fibre
technology will solve on its own.
From concept to consistent
Walk the floor of any major composites
event and the product innovation is genuinely
impressive. New thermoplastic systems. Biobased resins inching closer to industrial viability.
AI-assisted design tools that compress months
of engineering work into days. The materials
science continues to advance at pace.
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But innovation in a laboratory is not the same
as production in a factory. The gap between
the two has become one of the most pressing
issues the industry now faces.
Processes that work beautifully in controlled
prototype environments, where skilled
engineers manage every variable, can become
extraordinarily difficult to replicate when they
need to run at volume, across shifts, in factories
producing hundreds or thousands of identical
components to consistent quality standards.
This is not a theoretical concern. Aerospace
is one of the clearest examples. The next
generation of commercial single-aisle aircraft
will require composite production rates
that the industry has never come close to
sustaining. Targets discussed at JEC World
and SAMPE 2026 run to eighty or a hundred
aircraft per month per manufacturer. Current
composite manufacturing infrastructure is not
remotely close to that. The gap is not a matter
of fine-tuning. It is a fundamental shift in how
production systems need to be designed,
staffed, and managed.
The industrialisation barrier
What makes scaling composites so difficult?
Several things, and they compound each other.
First, composite manufacturing has historically
been labour-intensive and highly dependent
on skilled operators. Hand layup, manual
inspection, process-driven decision-making:
these are craft skills. They produce excellent
results. They do not, by their nature, scale
predictably. When a business doubles
headcount, it does not necessarily double
throughput. It often increases variability.
Second, composite processes are sensitive.
Resin infusion, autoclave curing, automated fibre
placement: each involves multiple interacting
variables. Temperature. Humidity. Resin
viscosity. Fibre orientation. Cure cycle. In a
prototype environment, engineers can adjust and
compensate. In a production environment running
round the clock, variation in any one of these
factors can cascade into defect rates, rework, and
waste that make the economics unworkable.
Third, the tooling and equipment investment
required to run closed-mould processes at genuine
industrial volume is substantial. Resin Transfer
Moulding and resin infusion, which are increasingly
central to scalable composite manufacturing,
require precision tooling and controlled process
environments. The capital commitment is
significant. Lead times for tooling alone can stretch
to months. For smaller manufacturers moving up
the volume curve, this is a genuine barrier.
