#Composites

2024-02-15

JEC World 2024: Composites at the heart of sports innovation

As the world turns its attention to France for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, JEC will be hosting, with Global Sports Week Paris, a day dedicated to sports and composites on March 7, 2024. This day will demonstrate how these revolutionary materials are redefining performance standards in 18 Olympic and Paralympic summer sports. From archery to sailing, composites are ubiquitous, offering lightness, resilience, and performance.

Composites and Sports: the era of optimized performance

The increasing use of composites in sports is redefining the standards of performance. These materials offer a unique combination of lightness, strength, and flexibility, enabling the manufacturing of cutting-edge sports equipment. From traditional Olympic and Paralympic sports like athletics and cycling to emerging disciplines like skateboarding, composites are omnipresent and greatly contribute to the evolution of athletic performances.

Approaching the 2024 Games, JEC World has chosen to highlight the undeniable impact of these innovative materials on the world of sports through a dedicated day on March 7, 2024. Developed with the Global Sports Week Paris, France’s leading international forum for the sports ecosystem, this Sports Summit will showcase concrete examples of innovations that increases the level of competition in each discipline.

A comprehensive program serving innovation

This special day focused on discovery and exchange will address numerous topics related to sports and composites such as:

The material at the heart of performance: lightness, resilience, stiffness, elasticity (…): the properties of composites can be a real added value.

The sports industry, a laboratory for composites innovation: new materials, new processes, sports provide a playground to test innovations that other sectors can only adopt after long industrial certification and implementation processes. How do major companies use the sports industry to test new processes, techniques…?

Sports for all with composites: equipment for Paralympic sports, physical protection of athletes (masks, helmets, cockpits…), and applications in the field of health.

Sports & ESG criteria (Environmental, Social, and Governance) – athletes, nature, and composites: athletes are pioneering the use of natural materials (bio-sourced and/or recyclable fibers and resins).

Foil & Composites: how composites have revolutionized competitive water sports and sports in general?

First speakers (other names will be announced soon):

Xavier Roussin-Bouchard, Innovation Director, Rossignol

Thomas Dupont, Composite R&D Manager, Look Group

Damian Cessario, Founder and CEO, V-Carbon

Christophe Lecompte, VP of Biomechanical Solutions – Research & Development, Össur

Luca Rizzotti, Founder, The Foiling Organization

To offer visitors a complete experience, the “Discover Composites” area, an immersive exhibition tracing the evolution of composites in sports, has been created at the entrance of Hall 6. This space will showcase a panorama of sports using composites as well as the major milestones associated with them. This exploration will reveal how composites shape the present and future of sports.

JEC World 2026 reveals the list of finalists for the Innovation Awards

Each year, the JEC Composites Innovation Awards recognize collaborative, innovative, and ambitious projects that illustrate the potential of composite materials. Created in 1998, this benchmark program aims to identify, promote, and reward the most innovative composite solutions worldwide. In 28 years, the JEC Composites Innovation Awards have attracted more than 2,200 participating companies from around the world. A total of 269 companies and 811 associated partners have been recognized for the excellence of their innovations.

Launch of the first JEC Forum Middle East

JEC is proud to announce the signature of a strategic collaboration agreement with the OSP and IFC Promosalons, the representative of JEC in the region. The major agreement aims to organize a series of events dedicated to Composite Materials held in Saudi Arabia for the first time in the Middle East starting in June 2025. The events will facilitate the creation of opportunities for local and international companies and accelerate the adoption of sustainable materials across multiple industries in the region.

JEC World 2025: a record-breaking 60th edition driven by innovation and circularity

After 3 dynamic days of intense business interactions, expertise sharing, and knowledge exchange, the 60th edition of JEC World 2025 has reaffirmed the pivotal role of the composites industry in building a more sustainable future. Under the unifying theme “Pushing the Limits,” the event showcased the extraordinary versatility and innovation of composite materials that continue to redefine lightweighting, performance, and design possibilities for an increasing number of applications.

MEL Composites and Carrocerías Ayats collaborate on lightweight composite window frames

MEL Composites is proud to announce its ongoing collaboration with Spanish bus and coach manufacturer Carrocerías Ayats, showcasing the benefits of advanced composite technologies and scalable manufacturing processes originally developed for the sporting goods sector. The joint development of lightweight composite window frame covers demonstrates how MEL’s process innovation can be successfully transferred to the transportation industry to meet new regulatory and performance goals.

More safety and comfort for protective clothing thanks to auxetic fabrics

When everyday materials are pulled, they stretch or elongate in the direction of the pull and become narrower in cross-section. We can also observe this property in two-dimensional textiles. Auxetic structures behave differently here. They have the striking property of not changing under tensile stress or even increasing their width or thickness. These properties are advantageous, for example, in protective textiles or textile filter media. The DITF are researching auxetic fabrics for various applications.

SHIMA SEIKI returns to ShanghaiTex

Leading flat knitting solutions provider SHIMA SEIKI MFG., LTD. of Wakayama, Japan, together with its Hong Kong and Chinese market subsidiary SHIMA SEIKI (HONG KONG) LTD., will exhibit at the ShanghaiTex 2025 exhibition (Booth No.: Hall N3, Booth A20) held in Shanghai, China this month. This marks the return of SHIMA SEIKI to ShanghaiTex after a 14-year hiatus, its last exhibit at the show having been in 2011.