THE ADVANCED COMPOSITES GROUP

OEMs fight for market share, speed to market, weight & cost reduction, lower emissions, better fuel efficiency, lower investment and higher margin. Where traditional metals are finding it increasingly difficult to rise to these challenges, affordable, high performance continuous-carbon and glass composite technologies can.

The Advanced Composites Group (ACG) has been at the forefront of composite technology for over 20 years and is well established as the world's leading supplier of composite technology and materials into the motor racing industry. Having introduced the first carbon composites into motor sport in the 1970s and then developed the accepted approach to manufacture integrated carbon composite monocoques in the 1980s, ACG has subsequently designed, developed or manufactured over 700 road and race car chassis.

ACG remains at the forefront of developing and translating this technology into the automotive industry to support the OEMs and suppliers who are facing the fundamental challenges to build affordable, lighter and more fuel-efficient vehicles.

We specialise in the manufacture of high performance composite materials and offer a unique one-stop-shop for composite technology; combining our extensive materials manufacturing capability with an unrivalled in-house design and production base.

As a global leader in composite material innovation, with technical and manufacturing locations in Europe and the United States, ACG's automotive support team design materials solutions that reduce time to market and meet and often exceed the automotive needs for vehicle weight reduction and cost reduction and integration of improved safety applications. We bring a unique combination of these technologies, process expertise, logistic support and automotive engineering to our customers worldwide.

ACG offers unique products, from initial styling prototype manufacture, through production components and systems to complete vehicle structures, including manufacturing jigs and fixtures to satisfy the stringent industry quality requirements.

As an example, our latest development ZPREG is a rapid manufacture composite technology. Because of the ease of processing and adaptability to a variety of processing techniques, it can offer a reduction of up to 90% in lay-up time compared with traditional pre-preg systems, gives a fault free/class A surface out of the mould and saves around 70% of the weight of a similar steel panel. The material cures between 65°C - 120°C in a standard oven and doesn't need an autoclave. This technology is applied equally to body panel systems and vehicle structures, without the need for the very high laminator skill level that is required typically in the aerospace and motor sport industries. Couple this performance with composite tooling, with a lead time of between 8-12 weeks for production tools, and you have the technology to produce vehicles in the tens of thousands per year cheaper and lighter than any traditional metal design.

Our strategy continues to focus on listening to the industry's needs and developing proprietary technologies and materials which resolve our automotive customers' problems, and on differentiating their products by increasing their performance with exciting and affordable composite applications, be they components, systems or complete vehicles.

ACG's continual material and processing developments offer genuine automotive solutions to the industry's complex engineering and commercial challenges. The greater design integration opportunities, together with flexibility of styling and manufacturing, result directly in superior vehicle performance, significant fuel economy and programme cost savings.

Advanced Composites Group Ltd
Composites House, Sinclair Close
Heanor Gate Industrial Estate
Heanor, Derbyshire, DE75 7SP, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 1773 534 599
Fax: +44 (0) 1773 719 289
e-mail: sales@acg.co.uk

Advanced Composites Group Inc
5350 South, 129th East Avenue
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74134
USA
Tel: +1 (0) 918 252 3922
Fax: +1 (0) 918 252 7371
e-mail: sales@acg-us.com

www.advanced-composites.com

 

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