Solvay receives multi-million pound UK grant for automotive composites development

The UK Government has awarded a multi-million pound grant to a consortium partnership involving Solvay, Bentley and Penso, that will enable the development of automotive composites.

The Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC) for the Flexible Lightweight Architecture for Volume Applications (FLAVA) automotive project will develop the composite design, material and manufacturing technologies required to implement a modular, multi-material Body-In-White structure suited for large production volume.

The project, through the manufacture of composite intensive vehicle prototypes, will demonstrate the technical and commercial solutions required to meet emission legislation with design flexibility, structural integration, lightweighting, vehicle assembly and logistics simplification.

This will demonstrate the capability of a composite supply chain to offer manufacturing processes that meet Automotive OEM quality, serial production rate and total cost of ownership requirements in standard OEM production facilities.

Alex Aucken, UK Automotive Director, at Solvay Composite Materials, said: “We are honoured to have been awarded this grant by the UK Government, and through this project we look forward to further develop our composite technologies portfolio to translate these technologies to the high-volume automotive market.”