McLaren opens Composites Technology Center

Jan. 16, 2018 marked the opening of the Yorkshire manufacturing center that, from 2019, will start producing carbon fiber tubs for McLaren Automotive (Woking, UK), the British creator of luxury sportscars and supercars.

As darkness descended at the £50 million (US$61.3 million) McLaren Composites Technology Centre (MCTC) nearing completion in the UK’s Sheffield region, McLaren Automotive chief executive Mike Flewitt was on hand to illuminate the famous marque’s sign. A spectacular indoor light show then greeted guests, culminating in a stunt driver using the recently unveiled McLaren Senna road car to perform a series of expertly choreographed ‘doughnuts,’ leaving a trail of fresh Pirelli tire rubber on the new center’s floor to ‘christen’ it, McLaren style.

Named after the famous Brazilian Formula 1 driver Ayrton Senna, who won all three of his World Championships at the wheel of a McLaren, the new McLaren Senna (the design of which was led by the company’s Rob Melville) was accompanied by Senna’s original Grand Prix winning McLaren MP4/5 race car from 1989.

The new Composites Technology Center, when open, will be home to McLaren’s second production facility and the first ever outside of Woking. More than 40 McLaren employees are already based in Sheffield, housed at the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, where they are advancing the process for creating the lightweight carbon fiber Monocage structures at the heart of McLaren cars. When fully operational, the MCTC will employ around 200 people, and will supply carbon fiber passenger compartment “tubs” to the McLaren Production Centre in Surrey where the company’s sportcars and supercars are hand-assembled.

Carbon fiber has long been a part of McLaren’s DNA. The company introduced the very first carbon fiber chassis into Formula 1 racing in 1981. Given carbon fiber’s innate strength and lightweight properties, McLaren hasn’t made a race car, sportscar or supercar without it since.

McLaren is continuing to develop its expertise in both hybrid engine technology and lightweight materials; it delivered the world’s first hybrid hypercar, trademarked the P1, more than five years ago. Materials and hybrid drive expertise are fundamental to the development of future automotive technologies, which must be capable of driving increased performance while meeting ever more strict environmental legislation. Under the company’s ambitious Track22 business plan, at least half of the brand’s model range will feature hybrid technology by 2022.

Further, McLaren Automotive announced early in January that it had recorded another record year of growth, selling a total of 3,340 cars in 2017.

Flewitt comments, “Today is an important and exciting milestone for everyone at McLaren Automotive, as well as a personal honor, to officially turn on the McLaren sign at what will be our McLaren Composites Technology Centre when it opens later this year. It marks the continued development of the current 2,100 strong company, and will bring new jobs to the Sheffield region, which has a proud association with advanced materials — first with steel and now a future to look forward to with carbon fiber innovation and production for McLaren.”