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The South West centre behind world-leading research into next-generation aircraft wing technology has welcomed a £15.8m investment from the government, saying it will accelerate innovation in a vital sector for the region’s economy.
As reported by TheBusinessDesk last week, the National Composites Centre (NCC) in Bristol will receive the funding as part of a £250m package that aims to maintain the UK’s lead in research into the future of flight.
Other firms with major operations in the South West to benefit from funding include Airbus, Rolls-Royce, GKN and Safran.
The NCC, on the Bristol & Bath Science Park, already boasts world-leading capabilities aimed at securing next-generation wing manufacturing in Europe.
The new funding will expand its technologies for high-value aerostructures – an advanced capability that secures UK leadership in the specialism along with other critical structures to support future aircraft platforms.
The funding, awarded by the Department for Business and Trade, Aerospace Technology Institute and Innovate UK, will go into the NCC’s £15.8m High Rate Manufacture Capital Acquisition Project (HRMCap).
It will be used to enhance its beyond state-of-the-art, open access technologies with a suite of 12 customer-ready capabilities to de-risk and accelerate innovation in high-rate large composite structure manufacturing.
The NCC, which helps companies capitalise on innovations to deliver more at every stage of the entire product lifecycle, is working with a dedicated UK Industry Advisory group to design, build, test, and commission the new capabilities to ensure HRMCap’s specification meets industry needs and is ready for use.
As well as anchoring future wing manufacturing in the UK, HRMCap’s multi-sector capabilities will deliver impact in wind energy, defence and other sectors.
Richard Oldfield, CEO of NCC, said: “As a world-leading innovation organisation with 15 years of expertise as a trusted industry partner, NCC plays a critical role in enabling the UK’s internationally recognised aerospace cluster.
“HRMCap reinforces our leadership in wing technology to underpin UK competitiveness for large composite structures, securing manufacturing content required for the global narrowbody aircraft opportunity.
“Supported by ongoing R&D programmes with prime partners, we are extending our end-to-end engineering services for customers keen to demonstrate next generation process innovations.”
Jacqueline Castle, chief technology officer of the Aerospace Technology Institute, said the investment from the ATI Programme strengthened the position of the UK as world-leading hub to develop and mature composite technologies for aerospace applications.
This would push the boundaries of current practice to increase production rates and the performance of products, and accelerate the uptake of composite materials into current and future generations of aircraft.
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