Responding to burgeoning demand for its products, market leader in recycled carbon fibre materials ELG Carbon Fibre is increasing the capacity of their UK carbon fibre recovery facility in Coseley, West Midlands.
In particular, said the company, the growing number over the past two years of large volume, commercial applications, including development projects and technical collaborations with leading automotive and aerospace OEM's and Tier 1s which require a steady and significant product supply, prompted the decision to expand its operations.
In 2016, to promote the use of recycled carbon in the composites industry, ELG installed a custom built, nonwoven production line to manufacture carbon fibre and hybrid thermoplastic mats in aerial weights from 100-500gsm and widths up to 2.7m. These products are currently being used in production automotive programs.
The company's current Investment will be targeted, among others, at adding capacity for its proprietary carbon fibre reclaiming process, a process which has enabled ELG to establish carbon fibre recycling at an industrial scale. ELG is now upgrading its pyrolysis furnace to increase output capacity beyond the current 1,000 tonnes of carbon fibre per year. This upgrade will be completed in the fourth quarter of 2018, after which ELG estimates it will be able to deliver 1,700 tonnes of carbon fibre products to its customers from the Coseley plant each year.
The company is also directing further investment toward the commercialisation of its Carbiso MB product line for reinforced thermoplastic compounds. ELG's MB products, developed in collaboration with Sanko Gosei, a manufacturer of plastic moulding for the automotive industry, are produced through the conversion of high grade, chopped fibres into a pellet form and tailored to applications that would traditionally have used chopped virgin carbon fibre. Both parties have conducted extensive trials replacing glass fibre reinforced compounds with ELG's recycled carbon fibre reinforced compounds in a variety of demonstration parts and achieved impressive weight reductions.