JEC Asia Innovation Awards Program 2012 - 11 companies rewarded for their composite innovations

JEC Innovation Awards Program is recognized as a leading tool in promoting innovation worldwide. They are organized at JEC Europe in Paris, JEC Asia in Singapore, JEC Americas in Boston, in China and in India.

Created in 1998, the JEC Innovation Awards Program has involved 1,600 companies and rewarded 177 companies and 433 partners for the excellence of their composite innovations. The objective is to spot, promote and reward the most effective solutions that create more value for end-users.

The received applications reflected the general concern and needs of the Asia-Pacific region in line with current trends such as composites research based on local renewable resources, new energies and recycling issues. The competing companies presented many collaborations within the Asian region (China, Japan, Korea, Australia, India, etc) but also Europe and America.

JEC President & CEO, Mrs. Frédérique Mutel explains:

“The JEC Asia Innovation Awards 2012 testify the Asian leading edge technologies developed locally in three main fields of research:

• resins and fibers,
• manufacturing of large parts (planes, trains, boats),
• difficult conditions infrastructures equipment such as for deep sea, offshore or mining extraction.

Asia Pacific countries have established significant R&D capacity in composites”, she points out.
“What is most interesting is the links between corporate composites R&D centers and universities or laboratories. Considering the 2012 Awards, we could say that for mature Asian Pacific countries such as Australia, Japan and Korea, these cooperations benefit to the transportation and construction sectors.

For fast growing countries like China, India, Malaysia or Thailand, their composite industry soars through the development of local industries. Their research clusters are being formed in the materials sector for resins and fibers and notably natural local fibers (kenaf, bamboo, vetyver, etc.). In these countries, another direction is high tech applications. For instance, we can point out that in Malaysia and Singapore, they mainly focus on composite processing for aerospace and construction.

Large emerging markets like India, because of the size of the country have an established but heterogeneous and disseminate composites industry value chain. They focus on local applications such as transportation specially railway and marine and energy (windmill).

Consequently by 2015, considering these significant investments in that region, Asian countries should keep on increasing their market share reaching more than 50% of the worldwide market”, she concludes.

In 2012, 11 companies are to be rewarded representing 9 categories

• Materials Category: Aditya Birla Chemicals (Thailand)
  Particleboard or wood composite made of vetiver grass-reinforced epoxy resin.

• Process Category: Quickstep Technologies (Australia)
  The Quickstep Resin Spray Transfer programme, designed to enable fully-automated serial production of advanced composite components.

• Recycling Category: Wuxi Adesso Nanotech Co. Ltd. (China)
  Cleavamine™ and Recycloset™ reworkable epoxy resins with a fibre recovery rate close to 95%.

• Test & Control Category: Textechno H. Stein GmbH & Co. Kg (Germany)
  Drapetest, a fully-automatic drapability tester for technical and non-crimp (engineered) fabrics.

• Building/Infrastructures Category: Matrix Composites & Engineering Ltd. (Australia)
  Composite drilling and completion centralisers with extreme mechanical properties combining a mineral reinforcement with a polymeric matrix.

• Automotive Category: Tokyo University (Japan)
  Development of innovative carbon fibre-reinforced thermoplastic technologies for mass production cars.

• Railway “exaequo” Category: DK Composites Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia)
  Glass-reinforced composite panels for a monorail train KRRI, Korea Railroad Research Institute (Korea) Composite bogie frame made of woven glass fabric/epoxy.

• Marine Category: IITB, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (India)
  Composite houseboat to promote ecotourism.

• Energy Category: Tractile Pty. Ltd. (Australia)
  First Building Integrated Photovoltaic and Thermal roof tile made of composite materials.

• Offshore Category: Petronas Research Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia)
  A solution to a long-standing challenge of corrosion and other damage sustained by pipelines and containment vessels in the oil and gas industry.

The 2012 JEC Awards ceremony will take place on Tuesday, June 26 at 4:00pm on JEC Asia and will be open to all visitors.

The 2012 Innovation Awards competition is actively supported by UMECO and JEC Magazine.

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