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SA PAVILION AT JEC WORLD 2018 – INSPIRING NEW WAYS
By Andy Radford, managing director, Mandela Bay Composites Cluster
THE first quarter of 2018 was an active one for the South African composites industry. One of the more visible events in which our industry participated was JEC World 2018 in Paris, France, in March. Twelve South African companies participated in the South Africa pavilion titled ‘South Africa – Inspiring New Ways’, which received a lot of positive attention from visitors and other exhibitors from around the globe.
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Positioning ourselves as a springboard for international investors in Africa provided us with a unique opportunity and value proposition and the South African pavilion added significance to this. Our presence literally and figuratively pointed to the fact that South Africa is indeed represented in the global composites and advanced manufacturing industry, even though we have much to learn and room for growth.
With 1 300 exhibitors and 40 000 visitors over three days, the JEC World 2018 event draws representation from across the world within four ‘Innovation Planets’ spotlighting the aero, auto, building and ‘make it real’ or implementation sectors. This is a vital entry or connection point for South African companies seeking market access. It is also a visible representation of the advanced technological capability and depth of certain companies and countries.
The prestigious Innovation Awards (which you can read about in this issue of Composite SA) are another way of recognising collaborative innovation in the industry, with Airbus as well as Daimler represented on the adjudication panel. Wouldn’t it be a boost for our industry to come home with an Innovation Award next year?
The conference sessions at the show as well as the JEC publication ‘Overview of the global composites market’ provided us with insight into where South Africa could position itself to become globally competitive.
Currently the global market is valued at $82bn. However, the industry’s global growth rate is slowing to around 5% as it faces a bottleneck when compared with other materials. In essence, composites compete on weight reduction but are challenged by other materials on cost competitiveness, production in long run length and recycling possibilities.
Asia will account for 60% of the growth, 35% through innovation, primarily in North America, Europe and mature Asia (Japan), and 36% through concentrated transportation and aerospace applications.
Between 2009 and 2015 thermoplastics have increased their share of the market against thermosets from 34% to 38%. Manual processes such as hand lay-up have decreased from 16 to 12% between 2012 and 2015.
Injection processes such as resin infusion and injection moulding have increased from 27% to 33% over this time. Continuous processes such as filament winding, panel manufacturing and pultrusion have decreased from 18% to 15%. In terms of automotive manufacture, disruptors such as Tesla and electric and hybrid cars will drive the growth of the composites market. Interestingly, autonomous cars are likely to be made of composites because metals are an obstacle to internet signal.
Composites in electronics and electrical equipment (second to transportation in terms of global market share) are also expected to grow at 4% based on the increased requirement for printed circuit boards.
It was notable that, except for a statistic that Africa and the Middle East represent 4% of the global composites volume, there are no other statistics for our continent. This presents an opportunity to start a process of information gathering and data analysis to report on our industry going forward. It also begs the question whether our industry has ‘catch-up space’ in which we could exceed global growth targets. This being said, we need to work hard at influencing large industry and government departments to specify and adopt composites wherever they can.
Aviation, auto and sports applications were in abundance across JEC World 2018; I counted no less than seven composite bicycle frames. There were very few small composites applications such as jewellery on display. This could present a unique composites opportunity in light of the current SA export value chains for precious metals and jewellery that can simply be tapped for composite jewellery.
Now, preparing for the African Advanced Manufacturing and Composites show in Port Elizabeth in November, let’s build on the concept of ‘SA - inspiring new ways’ to take a more prominent position at JEC World 2019.