Velocity Composites US facility is granted AS9100, AS9120 accreditation

Aerospace composite material kits supplier Velocity Composites (Burnley, U.K.) has reached a major milestone with the development of its first U.S. facility. The 40,000-square-foot facility, which was constructed to support the company’s operations in the aerospace manufacturing market — including Velocity’s recent $100 million deal with GKN Aerospace — has been granted key AS9100 and AS9120 status.

These standard ensure that the site provides the highest quality processes and standards while designing, manufacturing and distributing parts, products and services in all departments and stages of the composites supply chain for the aerospace sector. The approval matches similar accreditations at the company’s U.K. site which were renewed in 2022.

“Our customer agreement in the U.S. will help them to achieve major efficiencies and sustainability improvements in their composites supply chain, and achieving the AS9100 and AS9120 accreditations certifies that our processes are of the highest quality at both our new Alabama site, as well as at our U.K. headquarters,” Jon Bridges, CEO of Velocity Composites, emphasizes. “Our next step is to complete the full site build and bring our technology on site so that we can start delivering from early 2023 and run all programs from later in the year.”

The new facility in Alabama will build and supply all composite material kits as part of a new customer agreement, covering a diverse range of high-performance composite structures across military, civil and business jet programs, while helping the customer’s sustainability and efficiency objectives.

The site has been upgraded to the required cleanroom standard, where it will also include Velocity’s propriety digital technology and latest manufacturing systems. Velocity’s software helps to improve sustainability in the composites supply chain, by reducing waste, making efficiencies and improving traceability.

Site approvals and first article tests at the Alabama facility were completed at the end of 2022, and will be followed by volume production in Q1 2023, with all programs transferred to Velocity by Q3 2023.