At JEC Asia, Singapore (14-16 October) Hexcel will be celebrating the opening of a new sales office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The new KL office has been established to support Hexcel’s growing business for composites in the Southern Asia Pacific region and provide more efficient service to customers.  Newly appointed Sales Manager for South East Asia Pacific, Jobst Queckboerner, explains:  “Kuala Lumpur is an ideal location for a Hexcel sales office in South East Asia, at the centre of the region and with easy access to all nearby countries including regular flights to Australia and New Zealand.  Important Hexcel customers including CTRM and ACM are located close by.  Moreover with the award to Hexcel of the primary structures prepreg contract for the Airbus A350 XWB program, we expect to see growth in our aerospace business in the region.  It therefore made good sense strategically for Hexcel to locate in KL – to be able to provide customers with very efficient customer service and technical support and to reinforce our partnership approach with them.”

At JEC Asia Hexcel will promote its new Out of Autoclave prepreg, HexPly® M56, with displays on the stand and a presentation by Hexcel Sales Engineer Harvinder Gill.  CTRM has supplied two Out of Autoclave sandwich structure parts for Hexcel to display at the show:
An Inner Panel for the Airbus A380 wing using HexPly® M56 carbon and HexPly® glass prepregs, plus bronze mesh for lightning strike protection Redux® 319 film adhesive and HexWeb® HRH-36 aramid honeycomb.
Also a Leading Edge panel for an Airbus A320 wing manufactured using HexPly® M56 carbon and glass prepregs, with Redux 319A film adhesive and HexWeb® honeycomb.
HexPly® M56 provides the high quality and performance achieved with an autoclave cure from a simple oven cure under vacuum.  This avoids capital investment in autoclave equipment and on-going processing costs.

 
HexPly® M56 is available with woven carbon, UD carbon tape, woven glass and Metallic mesh reinforcements and is suitable for Hand Lay-up, Automated Tape Laying (ATL) and Automated Fibre Placement (AFP) processing.  The standard cure temperature is 180°C and an alternative 135°C cure cycle is possible, with potential for reduced tooling costs and composite repair applications.

As a matrix system toughened with thermoplastics, HexPly® M56 is suitable for both primary and secondary aircraft structures.  For primary structures very low porosity levels are required and HexPly® M56 has demonstrated less than 0.5% porosity.
Hexcel will also promote HexTOOL® M81, a new epoxy version of the established HexTOOL® M61 BMI tooling material.  HexTOOL® M81 cures in 6 hours at 125° C, followed by a post cure of 2 hours at 205°C and is designed for the manufacture of 120°C curing parts.
Unlike other composite tooling materials and Invar, HexTOOL® can be machined without distortion, allowing complex tools to be manufactured to tight tolerances.  With a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) that matches carbon/epoxy composites, HexTOOL® is lighter than metal tooling, allowing easier handling and reduced infrastructure investment.  HexTOOL® provides fast heat-up and cool down rates relative to metal tools, leading to reduced production costs.  It can be repaired and modified to accommodate design changes.
In addition to its aerospace composites business Hexcel is also a major supplier of composites for wind turbine blades and was proud to be presented with the Vestas Blades Supplier of the Year Award in June.  Hexcel will promote its products for wind energy at JEC Asia, in support of the prepreg plant opened in Tianjin, China established to support this growing industry.  As part of the wind energy display Hexcel will promote a new concept for wind blade manufacture, HexPly® SuperCap™ combining the benefits of prepreg and resin infusion in a blade design.  Hexcel has developed special heavy UD prepregs ideally suited to the manufacture of wind blade spars.
Hexcel is well represented in the Asia Pacific, with sales, technical support and customer service facilities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Shanghai, China; Yokohama, Japan; Bangalore, India; Seoul, Korea; and Melbourne, Australia.

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Hexcel Corporation is a leading advanced composites company. It develops, manufactures and markets lightweight, high-performance structural materials, including carbon fibres, reinforcements for composites, prepregs, honeycomb, matrix systems, adhesives and composite structures, used in commercial aerospace, space and defence and industrial applications.

Contact: Rachel Woolerton
Tel: +44 1223 838370
Rachel.Woolerton@hexcel.com