Rookwood Composites celebrates ten years of rapid growth

Rockwood Composites (Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.) is celebrating ten years of rapid growth, with a six-fold increase in the workforce and turnover increasing almost ten-fold. The company says this has included more than 50% in growth compared to last year in the midst of uncertainty for the engineering and manufacturing sectors. Rockwood acknowledges that, in the face of the pandemic, it has also continued recruiting, resulting in a 20% increase in staff in the last six months. 

Rockwood designs and manufactures composite components using out-of-autoclave (OOA) techniques, compression and bladder molding of prepreg composite material in metal tooling. It has also manufactured a high voltage (HV), high stress, electrical insulation systems for cryogenic applications and retains nine presses of varying sizes to cope with a wide range of components and five CNCs. 

“Within the last 10 years, we have vastly expanded our services. We are proud to have worked with so many OEMs across the defense, aerospace, nuclear and marine sectors, to name but a few,” says Mark Crouchen, managing director of Rockwood Composites. “The relationships that we have built with our customers over the past decade enables us to provide an excellent service. We work closely with customers and strive to over-deliver on product quality and cost effectiveness, providing continual process improvement for cost and performance optimization.”

Rockwood has been supplying a wide range of industries, including aerospace, marine, defense and nuclear and says it has established a proven track record of delivering complex structures. Highlights include:

• Delivering the 2,500th part to Roxel, a European tactical propulsion systems manufacturer.
• Worked with HAECO to revolutionize aircraft seating for the business market by developing and manufacturing a new style to the industry.
• Development of the towed decoy launch structure for the Eurofighter on behalf of Babcock.
• Celebrating 10 years with Leonardo with the production of the 10,000th blade for the towed decoy on the Eurofighter.
• Winner of a Composites UK Innovation in Manufacture Award.
• Designed and manufactured a wide range of high end cosmetic and engineering composite parts for the interiors of some of the world’s largest airlines.
• Designed and manufactured cryogenic suspension bands from prepreg material for use in MRI scanners, including a patented method of supporting the bands.
• Designed and manufactured a range of relatively low-cost medical knee braces.
• Researched the use of composites in high voltage insulation for the development program for ITER’s nuclear fusion reactor.
• Employed composites in the central core of the U.K.’s newest fusion device, Tokamak Energy’s ST40, with a precise application of a glass fiber/Kapton/glass fiber insulation layer.

Mark Crouchen adds. “The Rockwood technical and development team has gained expert knowledge and experience in the field of composite materials and manufacturing processes over many years of designing, developing and manufacturing composite components for a wide range of highly specialised applications.”