CompositesWorld, publisher of High-Performance Composites and Composites Technology magazines, has announced that the agenda is set for the Carbon Fiber 2009 conference, Dec. 9-11, 2009, at the new Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel on the water in downtown San Diego. Co-chairs for this year’s conference are Tom Lemire, western regional manager of Toho Tenax America (Rockwood, Tenn., USA) and and Anthony (Tony) Roberts, AJR Consultant LLC (Lake Elsinore, Calif., USA).

This international conference is designed for executives from leading fiber suppliers, end users, fiber converters, prepreggers and composites parts manufacturers to discuss the current supply and demand situation for carbon fiber as well as the future prospect for growth of new carbon fiber composite applications.

“Currently, there is an imbalance in the supply chain, with a surplus of fiber,” said Scott Stephenson, conference director. “Orders in aerospace and commercial aircraft such as the 787 and A350, although perhaps delayed, will sustain future growth of the market for carbon fiber. Planned capacity expansions by all the major suppliers—although postponed by some—and new suppliers, such as AKSA, will come online and secure supply for current aerospace and industrial applications. Still, some of the wary industrial end users of small tow wonder if the current surplus is déjà vu all over again, and they will be relegated to allocation when production of the 787 and A350 gets up to full speed again. It seemed clear at our Carbon Fiber 2008 conference that this market is being shaped by a number of forces besides aircraft. This diversity, unlike the market in the 1990s, was expected to ensure plenty of fiber demand for the next decade. However, it remains unclear just how many and how far these new industrial markets will develop, just as it remains unclear if the next generation single-aisle airliners will have carbon fiber fuselages or if they will be made out of aluminum alloy. We have a variety of presentations in this year’s agenda covering all of these topics.”

More than 145 marketing executives, business development specialists, technical directors and industry analysts attended last year’s event in Charleston, S.C. This year’s keynote presentations are:

--"Will Composite Materials Be Attractive for the Next Generation Narrow-body Aircraft?," by Jens Hinrichsen, president, Aerospace Advisory Group LLC, formerly Chief Engineer Airbus

--"Carbon Fiber Composites Research and Development at Automobili Lamborghini," by Maurizio Reggiani, vice president of R&D and CTO, Automobili Lamborghini S.p.A., and Paolo Feraboli, professor and director of the Automobili Lamborghini Composites Laboratory, Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics, University of Washington

In addition, there will be two pre-conference seminars on Dec. 9. In the morning, "Carbon Fiber for Tomorrow – A Review of Current Technologies and the Path to Widespread Industrial Growth," will be presented by David Warren, program manager for Transportation Materials, along with a team of instructors from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The afternoon session will be: "The Opportunities for Carbon Fiber in Current and Emerging Markets," presented by Chris Red, editor and VP of Market Research for Composite Market Reports (Gilbert, Ariz., USA) and Tony Roberts, principal, AJR Consultant, LLC.

For more information on the conference, or to register, visit www.compositesworld.com/cf or contact Ralph Jessie, conference manager, by e-mail at jessie@compositesworld.com; by phone at +1 207-221-6603; or by fax at +1 207-221-5848.