• Credit: Quickstep
    Credit: Quickstep
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Quickstep Holdings, the manufacturer of advanced carbon fibre composites, has announced that its Automotive Division has been successful in securing a Cooperative Research Centre Project (CRC-P) grant of $1.45m from the Australian Government.

The grant will fund a new project to develop ‘Bespoke lightweight automotive carbon fibre composite seats’.

Carbon fibre composites remain niche products in cars primarily due to the high cost of materials and manufacturing, despite the weight reduction, improved performance and aesthetic appeal they provide.

According to Quickstep, this project aims to solve these problems by combining product design with advanced manufacturing and materials research, to deliver a bespoke materials and process solution for lightweight carbon fibre seats.

The grant was announced by the Assistant Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Craig Laundy, during a visit to Quickstep’s New Technology facility, located at Deakin University’s Waurn Ponds campus. On announcing the grant, the Assistant Minister said “Quickstep’s achievements in advanced manufacturing – creating new products, processes and technologies – are an inspiration not only to other businesses but also our future engineers and scientists”.

David Marino, the CEO and managing director of Quickstep said the outcomes from this project will lead to global seat parts supply opportunities for Quickstep.

“The market for bespoke lightweight carbon fibre seats is growing, particularly with the accelerated growth of luxury and electric vehicles in a number of the global markets we are targeting.”

The CRC-P project will run for a period of three years in cooperation with a global automotive seating supplier and Deakin University, who are both contributing Project Partners in this CRC-P project. The global seating and interior systems supplier, with operations in multiple international markets, will provide the project with seating design, specifications and testing capability.

Deakin University’s Carbon Nexus Research Centre for carbon fibre and composites will provide its expertise in materials development and testing, including lower-cost carbon fibre development, resin formulation and process simulation and validation to the CRC-P project. Quickstep will bring to the project its capabilities in developing advanced composite solutions, providing its advanced composites technologies to manufacture composite parts using its patented Qure and RST processes.

The global automotive seating systems market is a significant product segment in the automotive sector, currently valued at about US$67 billion pa, with around 93.5 million vehicle seat sets forecast to be manufactured and supplied to vehicle producers globally in CY2017. Lighter weight seat systems offer significant advantages to manufacturers of luxury and performance vehicles, SUVs and electric vehicles and represent an attractive target segment for the CRC-P project partners.

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