Carbon footprints: Inside Bristol's National Composites Centre

Located on the outskirts of Bristol, the National Composites Centre was conceived in order to help UK industry push technological boundaries, forging a path for new manufacturing techniques. It is a testbed for the latest in composites technology, a proofing ground for machinery not yet mature enough for the frontlines of industry, yet with the potential to bring about major production step-changes.

iCAP is the NCC’s most recent programme of investment. A sort of factory-laboratory hybrid, the 10,000m2 space features 10 new machines, purchased under a two-year acquisition project that came in at £36.7m. With almost every component across the new portfolio of machinery made bespoke, the price tag is no surprise.

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“There is one half of one piece of the smallest bit of kit – so about 0.2 per cent of the programme value – that’s off the shelf,” Peter Giddings, chief engineer for the iCAP programme, told The Engineer. “Everything else was built bespoke for us. In all 10 cases there is at least one thing that’s new to the company, in seven of the ten, it’s new on Earth.