The long-term agreement provides now for a substantial ramp-up of current production and delivery volumes of gas diffusion layers for the NEXO fuel-cell car to support Hyundai’s objectives in the area of fuel cell drives. The investment required to fulfil this contract will not increase the overall capital expenditure budget of SGL Carbon in the next two years, as the company has reprioritised its investment projects.

In the medium-term, SGL Carbon plans to more than quintuple its business with fuel cell components to annual sales of approximately 100 million euro. The company supplies around 200 customers around the world with gas diffusion layers for use in fuel cells. As a result of the growing demand, the company has gradually stepped up production capacity at its plant in Meitingen. Thanks to its technological expertise and experience, SGL Carbon is in a position to manufacture high-quality components for fuel cells on an industrial scale. To further advance the accelerated commercialisation, the business with gas diffusion layers (GDL) will be transferred from the central R&D department Central Innovation to the business unit Graphite Materials & Systems (GMS) already in the fourth quarter 2019.

The extension of the partnership with Hyundai is perfectly aligned to our strategic direction. Intelligent solutions in the area of sustainable energy are one of the key growth drivers for our company. Whether used in a drive system in vehicles or as a stationary power supply, the fuel cell is one of the greenest energy technologies around. The market for fuel cells thus offers enormous potential for us. Dr. Michael Majerus, Spokesman of the Board of Management of SGL Carbon

Powered by hydrogen, the fuel cell is one of the cleanest technologies of the future. Hydrogen can be produced in a climate-neutral way using surplus energy from renewable sources. The only waste product after the reaction is water, which can be discharged in the form of water vapour. In the transport sector, the fuel cell offers a greater range and a shorter refuelling time than battery-powered drive systems. According to market estimates, up to 20 per cent of all-electric vehicles in the world will be powered by fuel cells by 2030. In addition to the automotive sector, there are also huge opportunities arising from the stationary use of fuel cells, e.g. as a power supply.

SGL Carbon has been carrying out research and development into components for fuel cells since the 1990s. The gas diffusion layers regulate the flow of gas within the fuel cell and carry water and heat away. They have a significant impact on the power density and the efficiency of the fuel cell. SIGRACET® gas diffusion layers from SGL Carbon were first used as a standard in the Hyundai iX35 in 2012.

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These materials, which address the need to reduce costs, CO2 emissions, and improve the production process and fuel efficiency of next-generation commercial aircraft, will be based on SGL Carbon’s large-tow IM carbon fibre and Solvay’s primary structure resin systems.

The agreement encompasses both thermoset and thermoplastic composite technologies. It builds on Solvay’s experience in supplying composite materials to the aerospace industry and SGL Carbon’s expertise in high-volume carbon fibre manufacturing.

By combining SGL’s carbon fibre expertise in our newly developed, unique 50K IM fibre with Solvay’s resin formulation, both partners are aiming to develop an advanced aerospace material system. Dr. Michael Majerus, spokesman of the management board of SGL Carbon

Composite materials for aerospace applications represent a multi-billion-dollar market that is expected to grow strongly in the coming decade. Solvay and SGL Carbon are uniquely positioned to develop solutions to address the needs of this market.

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Precursor is a polymer-based fibre which is used as the main raw material for the production of carbon fibres. The production line has been set up by converting and enhancing parts of the existing production facility in Lavradio.

The new line was completed in August following four years of research and development, construction work and qualification procedures. Over this period, in total, 30 million euros have been invested in Lavradio into different elements of the precursor production including the spinning line. As part of the global production network of SGL Group, the precursor from Portugal is being used as of September for the production of our new generation of high-end industrial SIGRAFIL carbon fibres in Moses Lake, Washington State (USA) and Muir of Ord (Scotland). The carbon fibres will then be used in various applications in the automotive, aerospace, as well as in other industries.

In order to further increase value for the customers, the business unit currently enhances its activities offering not only materials but also extensive expertise and support to enable customers to optimise the use of fibres and materials for composites. In this context, SGL Group also sets up a new Lightweight and Applications Centre (LAC) at its biggest site in Meitingen, Germany to facilitate the product and manufacturing technology development from fibres and materials to component.

The completion of the precursor production line is also a consequent and successful step of further developing the business and set-up of the FISIPE site in Lavradio, Portugal. Having been founded more than 40 years ago, FISIPE has established as a specialist for acrylic fibres. Under the umbrella of SGL Group – which acquired FISIPE in April 2012 – the acrylic fibre business is maintained while the precursor production has been set up.

The precursor production is part of SGL Group’s path forward towards sustainable profitable growth targeting a 50% sales increase until 2020 in the fields of composites and graphite materials and systems. In future, the Company will focus on supporting and accelerating developments linked to the mega trends of mobility, energy, and digitalisation.

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The research project linked to the funding was launched back in April this year and will run until June 2017. The goal of this research project is the development of a carbon fibre with significantly increased elongation and an optimised surface structure adapted to the existing sizing system.

The total funding for this project of €2.9 million has been allocated as part of the BMBF’s Leading-Edge Cluster funding program, in which, as one of fifteen technology networks in the Germany-wide initiative, leading-edge cluster MAI Carbon (Munich, Augsburg and Ingolstadt) supports promising projects for the development of carbon-fibre composites.

The MAI CaFeE research project under the management of SGL Group is also being promoted by the two project partners, the University of Augsburg and the BMW Group. The Chair for Experimental Physics II at the University of Augsburg will assist in analysing the structure and properties of the new fibre as it’s being developed by SGL Group. To guarantee a timely test in a surrounding close to the final application, the newly developed carbon fibre will be tested by SGL partner BMW.

Thermoplastic fibre composites as a new type of material class offer several new opportunities for the application and processing of carbon fibre materials. They enable shorter cycle times, weldability, reparability and re-use, thereby offering the customer cost and processing benefits.

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The new system which looks at enhancing the cost-effectiveness of manufacturing thermoplastic carbon fibre composites is based on a reactive polyamide system and compatible carbon fibres. A carbon-fibre surface or sizing specially designed for the matrix system as well as tailored thermoplastic reactive systems mean that lightweight structural components can now be manufactured quicker and easier.

The partnership between the SGL Group and BASF was launched back in October 2012. On the basis of the now-complete material research, the transfer of the special systems made from carbon fibres and matrices into specific applications of customers in the automotive industry is now under way.

SGL developed a new sizing formulation for the carbon fibres. In addition, special processes for manufacturing carbon-fibre-based textiles such as fabrics and braidings were also developed. To produce Non-Crimp-Fabrics (NCF), special threads are used that enable processing in the reactive polyamide system.

BASF’s role was to process the newly developed carbon fibres using the thermoplastic resin transfer molding technique and to characterise them comprehensively both chemically and mechanically. The BASF research team is continuing to work intensively on the development of caprolactam-based thermoplastic reactive systems.

Josef R. Wünsch, head of Structural Materials and Systems Research at BASF said;

In close collaboration with plant manufacturers as well as tiers and automotive OEMs, we are working on the development of robust polyamid 6 carbon-fibre composite systems. The mechanical characteristic values arising from the interaction of the fibre and matrix are crucial input parameters for our simulation tool Ultrasim.

Thermoplastics-based carbon-fibre composites combine the properties of carbon fibres such as high rigidity and low weight with the familiar processing advantages of thermoplastics, allowing them to be formed, recycled and welded. This helps make carbon fibre technology an even more viable proposition for large-scale production in a number of different applications.

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The joint venture, founded in 2007 by SGL Group and Kümpers GmbH, has relocated from its development site in Rheine-Gellendorf to the new production facility in the Rheine-Nord industrial park in Salzbergen-Holsterfeld in Westphalia.

In addition to the existing fabric and braiding machines, this new production facility has been equipped with a wide range of customised, highly automated production lines. Continuous production up to seven days a week is planned at the new location, with full production capacity expected later on in the year.

The facility in Rheine will be used primarily for the production of carbon-fibre preforms for the automotive and aviation industry. Another highly innovative product is a glass-fibre fabric, which is already used in automotive series production in the form of leaf springs for the Volvo XC 90 as well as in the commercial vehicle sector. The new site is also home to the SGL Kümpers development department, which creates innovative technologies for series production in vehicle construction. Key reasons for the decision to relocate to this site included not only the state-of-the-art premises but the excellent transport links.

SGL Kümpers is one of Europe’s leading companies for the textile processing of carbon and glass fibres in the field of fabrics and braidings for the wind, automotive and aviation industry. Given the ongoing high demand, particularly from the automotive sector, the dynamic growth is set to continue over the next few years.

The joint venture currently employees around 150 people at the Lathen and Rheine-Nord plants. Sales volumes have been increasing continuously over the past few years, with sales rising from €10 million to almost €40 million between 2006 and 2013.

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Dingwall Sheriff Court heard earlier this year that Mr Grzybowski was working on a production line to heat-treat carbon fibres where the material is pulled through a series of ovens operating at increasing temperatures. On the day of the incident he was heading for his break when he noticed that the carbon fibre material coming out of an oven had wrapped around a roller.

He and his deputy team leader went to the front of the oven, which was heated to 200C, and Mr Grzybowski climbed through the barrier and began to move the material that had caught using his left hand.

The deputy team leader, unaware that Mr Grzybowski still had his hand inside the machine, instructed another operator to open the nip roller, which narrowed the gap between two rollers trapping Mr Grzybowski’s left wrist.

He reached in with his right hand to withdraw his left and burned that wrist too. He was wearing company-provided gloves and safety jumper but was not wearing the Kevlar arm sleeves provided by SGL at the time.

Mr Grzybowski was taken to hospital with severe burns to the back of both his wrists and a first degree burn to the inside of his right forearm. The following week he underwent surgery to have skin grafts on his wrists and spent a week in hospital before returning to work with the company.

An investigation by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) revealed that despite suitable guarding being installed on similar trapping points on other production lines, SGL had failed to identify the risk on the line Mr Grzybowski worked on.

The company also failed to identify the risk to employees of being in very close proximity to the machine during the recovery activity and there was a failure to ensure that the process was stopped or workers withdrawn from the area before continuing.

Additionally, SGL failed to ensure that the need to access dangerous moving parts, namely the rollers, was prevented or controlled or that the movement of those dangerous parts stopped before workers entered into the danger zone.

The company was fined £10,000 after pleading guilty to breaching Section 2(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974.

Following the case, HSE inspector Mac Young, said:

This incident was entirely foreseeable and therefore entirely preventable. Where an employee is able to gain access to dangerous moving parts, there is a risk of coming into contact with them. The company should have identified the risk posed to workers on this particular production line and made sure it was adequately guarded as they had done on other lines.

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SGL’s CEO Juergen Kohlen told a German newspaper that the company is in talks with a number of manufacturers who are all looking to magical material for lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles. He went on to say that the new contracts were not going to be as big as the BMW venture.

Uncertainty lingers over the success of the BMW “i” series of electric cars, with the company ploughing billions in the project only to sell just over 10,000 i3’s by the end of September. Last week rumours emerged that BMW and Tesla were meeting to join forces on carbon fibre supply and battery technology share.

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk in an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel said that Tesla is talking with BMW on “whether we can work together in battery technology and charging stations”. He went on to say that BMW has ”relatively inexpensive carbon fibre production”, which could be interesting for Tesla.

Sources close to BMW said that discussions with Tesla were only informal and that the Palo Alto company might be dropping the BMW name for PR reasons, after both Daimler and Toyota sold their shares in the company back in October.

The use of carbon fibre in cars is still at the early stages and has yet to establish itself as a sizeable business for SGL with Automotive and transport sectors only accounting for just 2% of last years sales.

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Exactly how MAI will cheapen carbon fibre hasn’t been made clear just yet, but the $102 million project has been backed by some very big players in the market, including carbon fibre manufacturer SGL Carbon, Audi and Airbus.

Klaus Drechsler, head of the project told Bloomberg;

We’ve certainly reached a halfway point on our cost-cutting target for suitable carbon fibre parts and we’ll see a lot more carbon-fibre use in the next generation of cars. The key is to really drive automation, there are different scenarios about how carmakers can use carbon fibre, extensively like BMW, with a carbon-fibre chassis, or with smaller components.

BMW began rolling out its i3 almost a year ago in November and has sold over 10,000 in the first 9 months of sales. Speaking earlier in the year at the Paris motor show they said that the technology is very, very economical and has been rumoured to be used in other BMW models like the high-end 7 series sedan.

Similar research efforts are under way at Oak Ridge Carbon Fibre Composites Consortium, based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, with partners including Ford and Dow Chemical.

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The site expansion will be funded by an extra 200 million dollar investment, on top of the previously invested 100 million. The project is expected to be completed by early 2015 and will make the Moses Lake site the largest carbon fibre manufacturing plant in the world.

With the anticipated creation of 120 new jobs, the headcount at the joint venture in Moses Lake is going to rise from currently 80 to about 200 people. Due to the automated production processes, the expansion of the site in Moses Lake will make it possible for the BMW Group to apply carbon fibre material also in other model series in the future, at competitive costs and in large quantities.

At the moment, the Moses Lake plant operates two production lines, exclusively for BMW i, with an annual output of approx. 3,000 tons of carbon fibre. Already this summer, SGL Automotive Carbon Fibres will commission a third and fourth production line in Moses Lake, which are currently being built, thus doubling the plant’s capacity to 6,000 tons per year. The recent groundbreaking ceremony for a fifth and sixth production line has been the first step toward tripling capacities to 9,000 tons annually in the medium term. The energy needed for the carbon fibre production is fully generated from hydropower.

Dr. Jürgen Köhler, CEO of SGL Group explains;

With its highly automated carbon fibre production and stringent quality standards, Moses Lake is setting new standards in the industry. At present, the site is the world’s fastest growing carbon fibre producer. Together with the BMW Group, we are doing pioneering work to establish CFRP as a material in large-series automotive production. In a mix of materials, CFRP offers new opportunities in lightweight construction for an Eco-friendly mobility.

The carbon fibre plant in Moses Lake is a key element in the strategy pursued by the two companies, which anticipates the industrialised large-series production of carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) for the application in future vehicle concepts. Up to now, carbon fibre produced in Moses Lake is exclusively used for the BMW i models. Since the start of the year, the Leipzig plant has built over 5,000 BMW i3 vehicles. At present, the production output stands at 100 units a day. Furthermore, the BMW Group has been applying the ultra-lightweight high-tech material also in its BMW M models for the past ten years.

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