JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #129 - July/August 2019 - 33

FEATURE
textile

Porcher lndustries: Redefining composites
through its excellence in Sports and Leisure. 
Porcher Industries, a company with a talented team of textile, composite and chemical engineering experts, presents new market-specific
technical textile and thermoplastic composite solutions. As a major
player, Porcher Industries is active in five key markets: aeronautics &
defence, automotive, building, industry, and sports & leisure. With 16
industrial sites in Europe, China, the United States and Brazil, the group
has a workforce of 2250 and a turnover of €320 M.

l

Sustainable fabrics with
vibration dampening properties
Porcher Sport, an innovative developer
of lighter, safer and more durable reinforcements for sporting equipment,
recently introduced the Greenlite® range
of fabrics. Previously recognized with
a JEC Composites Innovation Award,
Greenlite® fabrics use low-density
cellulose fibres to produce a range of reinforcements that are biodegradable, highly
compatible with bioresins and suitable
for large-volume manufacturing of biobased composite sporting goods such as
skis, snowboards, rackets and surfboards.
In addition to their contribution to

sustainability, these composite materials
exhibit exceptional vibration dampening
characteristics, improving comfort and
reducing fatigue in all performance sport
applications.
Ultra-light avalanche airbag fabric
Porcher Sport is elevating the level of
safety for skiers and snowboarders with
a new ultra-lightweight avalanche airbag
fabric launched in January at ISPO 2019.
Considered as the lightest fabric on the
market with a super low weight of just
132g/m², this new performance fabric is
proven to reduce the weight of avalanche
bags by more than 12%. Treated with an
in-house formulated coating designed
to resist the harshest of conditions, the
material also boasts an extreme tear
resistance, more than 50% higher than
other airbag fabrics. Easily repackable

Greenlite is a 100%
bio-based cellulose
fabric for sporting
goods

N°129 July - August 2019

/ jec composites magazine

Feature Sports & leisure

nnovation is at the heart of Porcher
Industries' strategy. At the beginning of
the year, the company appointed JeanMarc Senecot as Global Head of R&D for
the group.
Taking a global responsibility for innovation and new technology across the group,
Jean-Marc Senecot leads the successful
delivery of all new product development
and technology projects - typically managing more than 90 projects per year.
Innovation is based on three pillars that
form the core of Porcher Industries'
strength:
1) Lightweighting: R&D activities on
high-performance thermoplastic matrices
resulting in successes such as the first TP
C/PEEK primary part for the Airbus
helicopter rotor, the lightest fabrics for
paragliding and lightweight composites
for automotive using polypreg fabrics.
2) Safety: through a dry fibre product
that adds toughness to composites,
development of a new generation of RCY
(rubber coating yarn) for timing and
transmission belts, automotive airbags
and environmentally-friendly products
such as GreenLite.
3) Recycling through life cycle analysis:
for example, improving the life cycle of
glass fabrics by utilizing waste in exhaust
applications and the ADEME project that
aims to give a second life to TP/C scraps.

In recent months, the group presented a
large number of new developments, especially in the field of sports and leisure.
Some of them are presented below.

33
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #129 - July/August 2019

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