On 21st November, The National Composites Centre (NCC) officially launched its new building in Filton with a group of VIP guests including representatives from funders including Innovate UK/UKRI, BEIS, ATI and its local authority. They also welcomed members and customers. The building has been commissioned to meet the ever expanding capacity needs of the NCC as it works with partners across multiple sectors including aerospace, automotive, energy and construction.

The composites sector is incredibly fast growing at 12% per year – with an anticipated value of £12bn to the UK economy by 2030. The National Composites Centre is the UK hub of composites capability and expertise; having invested over £200m to date to help industry and boasting over 500 composites specialists from cutting edge research to innovation and manufacturing scale-up.

As part of the VIP launch a number of exhibits and demonstrators were set up in a gallery to showcase some of the innovative work undertaken at the NCC since its opening in 2014. This included one of its ongoing successes the Dymag Boxstrom wheel which the NCC helped create at a 1/3 of the cost in a 1/3 of the time and is currently helping with scale up and its latest exhibit – a composite braided Aerofoil, which was made last week during factory acceptance tests of the NCC's giant axial braider – the largest of its kind in the UK - which will be available for use from the New Year. Member organisations Airbus and GKN provided tours of their cells to help tell guests the story of the 'Wing of Tomorrow' programme which the National Composites Centre is a key partner and a number of high level meetings were timed to coincide with the launch.