To better serve the needs of carbon fiber production in Europe, a group of investors have built a new state-of-the-art carbon fiber facility in Portugal called CarbonTeam.
Following the success of Portugal’s aluminum frame production firm, Triangle, that was founded by Rodi, Miranda and Ciclo Fapril, the trio has joined forces with the German and Taiwanese composites companies Bike Ahead and Art Collection to bring mass production of carbon fiber frames to Europe.
According to CarbonTeam, given the current problems involving supply chain issue with the Far East, the company sees a growing interest for brands in Europe.
The initial investment for the Carbon Team frame project was 8.4 million euros, giving them the capital needed for the construction of a 9,000 square meter factory that was completed at the end of 2020 in Campia, Vouzela – a location that’s very accessible to the Porto international airport.
“The factory has a capacity on 25,000 carbon frames on a very high level of production automation with 120 employees per year when everything is fully operational,” explains Carbon Team general manager Emre Ozgunes. “We expect to reach this capacity by 2024 and if needed we can expand this new factory by another 7,000 square meters.” For this year Carbon Team has plans to become accredited with both ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 certifications.
“Our first Carbon Team bike frame was designed by Art Collection and was produced together with Bike Ahead in Germany. This amazing looking 800 grams (M size) MTB HT frame is 100% Monocoque frame which requires no gluing. The frame has already passed the rigorous lab tests in Germany and is certified. Carbon Team uses prepreg carbon fiber and an autoclave process to get the best result in terms of mechanical properties in combination with design. Thanks to the implementation of Industry 4.0 with a high level of digitalization we can achieve 100 % traceability of the production process.
”Our business plan is to develop and industrialize carbon fiber parts,” says Emre Ozgunes. “Our open model was initially developed and produced to show our capacities to our future clients. Our standard operating procedure for our carbon team hard tail frame started at this 1st quarter of 2021 as we are in contact with several orders from bike assemblers who want to use our frame to launch their products. At the same time, we are already developing carbon fiber bike frame projects for our future clients.”
“We are very positive about the future of this project. Carbon Team fills an important gap in the supply chain in Europe and can become a key player for the industry in as provider of carbon fiber bike parts,” concludes Ozgunes.
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