Japan's Teijin announced today that its mass production technologies for carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) have been recognized by Frost & Sullivan through their 2011 Global Automotive Carbon Composites Technology Innovation Award.

"Teijin's new CFRP compression moulding technology offers a low cost-to-performance alternative, which makes it ideal for metal replacement in large structural body-in-white components," said Sandeepan Mondal, Senior Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan.

"The drastically reduced cycle times along with the development of economical thermoplastic resin intermediate materials and high processability which gives processors greater design freedom, have paved the way for Teijin to be a technology leader in automotive carbon composites. These achievements of Teijin are deservedly recognized with the Frost & Sullivan 2011 Global Technology Innovation Award."

Teijin's innovation is said to enable a significant reduction in cycle times - to under a minute - required for moulding automobile body structure. According to the company, conventional CFRP utilizes thermosetting resin and requires at least five minutes for this process, making it unsuited for mass production applications, such as for general-purpose automobiles, and limiting its use to high-end vehicles.

"Teijin's breakthrough, achieved utilizing thermoplastic CFRP, overcomes one of the biggest challenges in the industry and represents a significant leap forward in the use of carbon fibre in mass production of automobiles," a Teijin statement said this morning.

"With increasingly strict environmental standards and regulations in the automotive industry, there is mounting pressure to reduce vehicle weights through the use of lightweight materials, such as CFRP, for components conventionally made from steel or aluminium. The Teijin Group, the world's second largest producer of carbon fibre, is well positioned to be a leader in the development of such applications for CFRP," the statement continued.

"We are pleased that our automotive carbon fibre composite technologies were recognized by Frost & Sullivan as the industry leader," said Norio Kamei, general manager of Teijin's Carbon Fibers and Composites Business Group and president of Toho Tenax Co., Ltd.

"The award is highly meaningful for us as we accelerate our expansion of advanced composite materials - one of the pillars of the Teijin Group's long-term growth strategy. We will further our efforts in this key field, aiming to facilitate new vehicle architecture featuring significantly lighter bodies."

Frost & Sullivan's Technology Innovation Award is presented each year to companies that demonstrate outstanding excellence in new products and technologies within its industry. The award recognizes the quality and depth of a company's development, based on solid groundwork, secondary resources and analyst feedback.

Teijin's innovation was benchmarked against leading competitors in the industry, in terms of uniqueness of technology, impact on new products/applications, impact on functionality, impact on customer value and relevance of innovation to the industry. Frost & Sullivan is a growth consulting and a market research firm with operations worldwide.