Kent, Washington is conveniently located directly between the cities of Seattle and Tacoma in King County.  Kent offers award winning parks, excellent school systems and is home to a culturally rich population of 86,660.  Majestic Mt. Rainier, rising 14,410 feet above the valley floor, can be viewed and enjoyed for its scenic beauty throughout the city. 

Hexcel’s manufacturing location in Kent is a major supplier to the aircraft structures and interiors market, designing, manufacturing and selling a broad range of finished components used in commercial and military aircraft.  The Company’s customer portfolio comprises the world’s top aerospace and defense contractors including, Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. 

The Kent facility, which employs around 350 people, recently marked a historic milestone when it delivered its first Flight Test Blade to Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. in support of the S-76D helicopter program.  The delivery of this Flight Test Blade was a result of three years of dedicated effort by Hexcel staff to manufacture the first-ever offload of an entire helicopter blade from Sikorsky. 

Hexcel-Kent is also at the front of the engineering and production of HexMC®, a high range sheet-molding compound specifically designed for compression molding.  The Kent team is working on custom design, manufacture, testing and inspect detail components to meet customer specifications. HexMC® enables composite parts to be manufactured for:  

• Applications where complex 3-D shapes limit the use of typical fiber reinforced laminated composites,
• For use where metal was previously the only solution
• Parts with abrupt changes of cross-sectional thickness
• Applications where co-curing of elements is desired, i.e.: metal inserts or mixing with other materials, etc…
• Use with automated production process similar to SMC molding
• Production of parts with zero material waste

Hexcel-Kent additionally partners with two joint ventures in Asia.