AMRC breaks ground for COMPASS research facility

Industry, academia and government leaders have officially broken ground on South Yorkshire’s Composites at Speed and Scale (COMPASS) aerospace research facility, a University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC, Catcliffe, U.K.) innovation facility and research project led by Boeing (Arlington, Va., U.S.).

COMPASS will house the Boeing-led Isothermic High-Rate Sustainable Structures (IHSS) project dedicated to developing and testing new technologies needed to meet future demand for lighter commercial aircraft and the aviation industry’s net-zero commitment by 2050.

The combined £80 million COMPASS facility and IHSS project, announced earlier this year in partnership with Spirit AeroSystems (Wichita, Kan., U.S. and Prestwick, Scotland) and Loop Technology (Dorchester, U.K.), is jointly funded by industry, key stakeholders and the U.K. government’s Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) Program, a partnership between Department for Business and Trade, ATI and Innovate UK.

The undertaking will initially create around 50 jobs in South Yorkshire and, based on forecasted aircraft demand, has the potential to create up to 3,000 U.K. jobs long-term, and around £2 billion annually in export opportunities.

Steve Foxley, CEO of the AMRC, emphasizes the facility’s importance for the U.K. aerospace industry as well as composites manufacturing R&D. “COMPASS shows that collaboration really is the cornerstone of innovation, bringing together the strengths of industry, academia and government to develop production technologies that currently do not exist and turn them into future capabilities that can enable lighter aircraft and more sustainable flight,” he says.

COMPASS builds on the AMRC’s composites and automation capabilities to de-risk the development and manufacture of high-rate, large-scale composite parts, providing the wider U.K. industry with an open-access facility to develop, demonstrate, test and validate new composite manufacturing technologies and capabilities. The IHSS project will center around automated dry fiber and resin infusion advanced manufacturing methods, which enable high manufacturing rates and increase production efficiency.

The tender for the construction work for the building has been awarded to Henry Boot Construction. The facility is expected to be complete by the end of 2024.