At the ICC-congress in Stuttgart in early November 2018, AVK has published their market report. The GRP sector is recording its sixth consecutive year of growth. Germany remains the largest GRP/composites manufacturer in Europe with a total production volume of 229,000 tonnes although growth here is slightly lower than the trend for the overall European market. Thermoplastics are once again growing faster than the market as a whole. Please find the entire market report here. 

On Nov. 7th to 9th 2018, Dr. Michael Effing will be present at the African Advanced Manufacturing Show organized by the Mandela Bay Composites Cluster in Port Elizabeth and give a presentation about the European Composites Market. Further information can be found here. You can book your seat here. We are looking forward to seeing you there!

Under the title - "We have to think more and more about multi-material-systems", Dr. Michael Effing in his role as Chairman of the board of Composites Germany, replies to Editor-in-Chief Frédéric Reux´s questions in the Automotive feature of the recent edition of the JEC Magazine. Please find the entire article here.

After the AZL´s 5th Annual Partner Meeting in June, we are now looking forward to three promising new projects, two new studies - "Thermoplastic Tapes for SME Injection Molders" and "Composites in the Furniture Industry"- with kick-off meetings in October and November 2018. We are also about to finalize the project to realize the Ultra-Fast Manufacturing of Tailored Composite Blanks and will start the follow-up project with a kick-off on October 10th 2018. Finally, our five industrial Workgroups will all meet in the second half of the year. Our RTM Workgroup will widen the scope regarding thermoset processing technologies. We are looking forward to the new ENGEL injection molding system which will be installed at our technical center. Enjoy reading the news from our Partner Companies, Partner Institutes and our joint Partner Network Activities. Please find further information in the AZL NewsLIGHT#12.

On 27^th and 28^th June, 2018 the AZL Annual Partner Meeting took place. This year, for the 5^thmeeting already, 140 representatives of the 81 Partner Companies from 21 different countries came together for their strategic meeting and to get an overview of the activities of the past year and to define topics and activities for the coming year. In different sessions,  the individual partner companies exchanged and networked. Outcome: Three new projects and studies and outlook on three key topics. For further information please follow this link.