11-12 October 2023
Online
GOCarbonFibre: Europe's only conference dedicated to carbon fibre
Amy Fitzgerald has recently completed her doctorate with the University of Surrey that addressed the large gap in environmental data for carbon fibre production. She is now employed by the National Composites Centre to disseminate the output of this project, securing the place for carbon fibre composites on the sustainable agenda.
Julien Sellier, STRUCTeam’s Co-Founder and Managing Director, has over 20 years of industry experience in advanced materials and structural engineering. After earning a Master’s degree from École Centrale de Nantes, Julien held various Senior Structural Engineering positions before co-founding STRUCTeam in 2010. Julien supports clients across the renewables, marine and construction sectors and is leading the business on an ambitious and continued growth strategy. Specifically in Wind Energy, STRUCTeam has established itself as the spar cap specialist with years of experience enabling the growth of blades.
Dr Agi (Agnieszka) Brandt-Talbot is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London, and co-founder and director of bioeconomy start-up Lixea. Her research interests are developing chemical technologies that convert wood biomass into renewable chemicals and materials or processes that enable plastic recycling. Agi held an Imperial College Research Fellowship before becoming a Lecturer in 2022, enabling her to develop a research programme in the conversion of lignin to carbon fibres. Agi is a recipient of Imperial's President's Award of Excellence for Outstanding Early Career Researcher and the Department of Chemical Engineering's Sir William Wakeham Award.
Studied aerospace engineering at university of Stuttgart until 2005
2006 – 2010: Scientific employee at Fraunhofer Project Group for Ceramic Composites in Bayreuth
2010 – today: Fraunhofer IGCV, Scientific employee
2015: Head of Recycling of Composites Group,
2022: Head of Sustainable Composites Department
since 2018: elected member of the scientific technical board of the Fraunhofer Insitute.
2005 – 2011: RWTH Aachen University, Diploma - Mechanical Engineering/Plastics Technology
2008 – 2012: RWTH Aachen University, Master of Business Administration (MBA) - Economics
2012 - 2017: Institute of Plastics Processing (IKV) at RWTH Aachen University, Research Assistant, Composites and Polyurethanes
- Doctor Degree/PhD in the field of composites processing
Since 2017: Mitsui Chemicals Europe GmbH, Duesseldorf (HQ Europe),
Senior Manager Business Development,
Responsible for Thermoplastic Composites Business and Development in Europe
Graduated with a degree in material science in 1985, and spent his early career in the fledgling wind energy business, working on materials characterisation and blade design and manufacture.
Spent 10 years working on the use of carbon fibre composites in marine, defence, oil & gas and civil engineering applications, before moving to Cytec Engineered Materials and focussing on composites in aerospace. With Cytec, he spend 4 years in the US and then 4 years in China, establishing the Asia Pacific business and then building a plant near Shanghai. Frazer then spent a further 3 years in China, helping Hengshen establish its carbon fibre composites business.
Returned to the UK in 2014, to lead the development of ELG Carbon Fibre from an R&D to a commercial business, and then led the MBO of ELG Carbon Fibre that led to the formation of Gen 2 Carbon.
Graduated with a degree in material science in 1985, and spent his early career in the fledgling wind energy business, working on materials characterisation and blade design and manufacture.
Spent 10 years working on the use of carbon fibre composites in marine, defence, oil & gas and civil engineering applications, before moving to Cytec Engineered Materials and focussing on composites in aerospace. With Cytec, he spend 4 years in the US and then 4 years in China, establishing the Asia Pacific business and then building a plant near Shanghai. Frazer then spent a further 3 years in China, helping Hengshen establish its carbon fibre composites business.
Returned to the UK in 2014, to lead the development of ELG Carbon Fibre from an R&D to a commercial business, and then led the MBO of ELG Carbon Fibre that led to the formation of Gen 2 Carbon.
John has been in the Carbon Fibre manufacturing industry since 1982, working first on the development of Courtaulds large tow precursors and their conversion into Oxidised fibres for RK Carbon Fibres Ltd, which was closely followed by 3, 6, and 12k precursors for conversion to Carbon Fibres.
He became involved in plant construction in 1986 as part of a team working on Technology Transfer Projects in India, China and South Korea. In 1991 he left RK Carbon and was involved in a project in Russia after which, in 1995, he returned to India and China on Technology Transfer Projects for RK Carbon.
In 1997 RK Carbon was acquired by SGL Technic Ltd at which point he was appointed Project Manager for a £25m inward investment project to build two state of the art Carbon Fibre production lines in Scotland.
He left SGL in 2003 to form Milled Carbon Ltd, where they developed the world’s first commercial continuous carbon fibre composite recycling process. The company was later acquired by German metals reclamation company ELG Haniel.
In 2008 he began working on Technology Transfer Projects in Italy, Turkey and Portugal with US and European partners. Further Technology Transfer Projects continued over the next 5 years in China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Thailand and India.
In 2014, after over 12 years of discussing collaboration possibilities, he joined Cygnet-Texkimp Ltd in Northwich, Cheshire, where he offers turn-key solutions for Carbon Fibre Production Facilities.
Andrew Mafeld has over thirty years of experience in the global composites industry covering the carbon, glass and natural fibre sectors. He is the founder and Managing Director of the Connectra group of companies, a Swedish based international business development consultancy working in composites materials.
Prior to founding Connectra in 1998, Andrew held Vice President positions in both commercial and technical areas at Owens Corning, in both Europe and the USA. Earlier in his career, Andrew worked for Procter & Gamble and Monsanto. Andrew has a chemical engineering degree from Imperial College, London, an MBA from INSEAD, France and speaks multiple languages.
He has authored numerous composites related reports for clients worldwide, including companies, government ministries and regional development agencies. His book on "The Automation of Polymer Composites Manufacturing" was published by JEC in 2010 and he regularly presents papers on the composites industry at conferences in Asia, the USA and Europe.
Dr. Hans Hansson has been working in the composite field since 1980. He has professional experience from the composite industry in different leading positions in R&D, production and marketing of composite components. Hansson has for more than 20 years been CEO of Swerea SICOMP, one of Europes leading research institutes focused on composite technology. He is now working as Senior Advisory for Invest in Norrbotten.
Paolo Grati took his Master of Engineering in Aeronautics in 1983. After some years as sales manager in a
private company producing thermo-acoustic insulation products, he moved to the composites world as
Commercial Director of a leading European weaving and prepregging company.
In 2006, after 16 years in the international market he founded the GP Marketing Consulting Sas and now
offers to share his expertise and skills working with proactive attitude in the marketing and development of
composite materials, with a particular focus on carbon reinforcements. He proactively cooperates with
leading national and foreign based companies for the development of new products and the search of
alternative raw materials worldwide.
He follows the applications of the carbon fibres both from PAN and PITCH precursors focusing on processing
of continuous fibres (weaving, multiaxial manufacturing, pultrusion, filament winding, UD prepregs, RTM and
resin infusion technology). He assists the customers on designing and developing new innovative projects on
behalf of partner companies, following both technical and commercial aspects, mainly in the automotive and
industrial fields.
Dr Greg Lipoczi is working with composites for more than 15 years, started in manufacturing of automotive, rail, wind energy and aerospace parts in the Omikron Group, continued in working with engineering of wind turbine blades, marine and automotive applications at STRUCTeam, joined the Renault-Nissan Alliances in 2017 dealing with process excellence and digital transformation and since 2019 he is the Business Development Manager at Scott Bader focusing on Wind Energy. Greg has a Master Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma, is a Lean Practitioner, has a Doctorate degree in law, a Masters Degree in economics and various qualifications in composites.
