“Investing in what comes next”: meeting America’s carbon fibre needs

In my last post I wrote about supplies of carbon fibre composites as a core vulnerability in the US defence supply chain – but from our travels across the country, Nandina REM has seen that this is an issue that’s far from limited to one industry.

The proportion of carbon fibre applications in aerospace, aviation and defence mean these sectors are most exposed to supply risks. But the use of composites across advanced manufacturing applications has long since outrun US production levels, rising by multiples over the past decade, with implications for the whole industrial base.  Those sectors increasingly seeking lightweighting and high-strength performance properties range from automotive to energy and renewables.

An overreliance on overseas carbon fibre sources is exposing businesses across US industry to unpredictability in carbon fibre production, import availability and pricing. Underpinned by factors from geopolitical uncertainty to natural hazards, these substantive, and even existential, risks represent a profound vulnerability that unless resolved will undermine the profitability, planning and innovation of US businesses in the longer term.

Awareness of these challenges is widespread. Over the past year we have visited manufacturers across a quarter of states in the Union: from Texas, Utah, California, Alabama, Washington and Illinois, to Ohio, New York, Virginia, Washington D.C., Maryland and Kansas.  All the businesses we’ve engaged with have had to look to international markets, and all grasp the resulting risks they face. Government agencies also long understood the negative economic and national security implications of the current situation.

The received wisdom is that the US faces potentially prohibitive challenges in creating a sovereign carbon fibre production capability that can begin to meet the national demand. From a position already lagging behind producers such as China and Japan, it is said that the country is weighed down by comparatively high cost of skills, advanced technology and R&D, and by the challenges procuring raw materials.

We suggest that a new lens is needed. Discussing the need to invest in innovation in lithium-ion technologies to meet pressing US national and commercial demands, strategic investment firm IQT says:

“Long-term competitiveness will not be won by scaling what already exists. It will be won by investing in what comes next with new manufacturing capabilities and reduces the US’s dependency on single source nation states.”

It’s a vision that is equally applicable to carbon fibre composites – and we agree that new ideas and approaches can help the US leap-frog to the next generation of carbon fibre production. From identifying secure sources of domestic feedstock, to leveraging innovation to rapidly create critical parts, and building alternative advanced manufacturing pathways, Nandina REM is helping to forge resilience through readiness, innovation, agility and operational excellence. 

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