OREANDA-NEWS. Versarien plc, the advanced materials group, is pleased to announce the successful completion of a grant funded project focused on graphene enhanced carbon fibre composites with the National Graphene Institute ("NGI") at The University of Manchester.

Versarien has been collaborating with the NGI since November 2014. Extensive trials of the graphene produced by Versarien's subsidiary, 2-DTech, by an NGI team led by Professor Robert Young, Professor of Polymer Science and Technology at The University of Manchester, in carbon fibre composite products, has demonstrated the benefit of adding graphene, particularly with regard to significantly enhancing the strength of the structure.

Following the positive test results from the project the NGI have indicated that they wish to purchase a significant quantity of graphene from Versarien for a specific project with a major OEM.

Professor Robert Young FREng, FRS, Professor of Polymer Science and Technology at The University of Manchester, commented: "The successful project demonstrated that the addition of 2-DTech XT graphene to the epoxy resin matrix was able to give a significant improvement in the performance of carbon-fibre reinforced epoxy composites.  This technology is now being evaluated by a major UK company for use in a number of different structural components, with a view to commercial products being produced within the next six months."

James Baker, Graphene Business Director at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester, commented:  "This successful collaboration between industry and academia that has taken place in the National Graphene Institute is now seeing the accelerated development of future products and applications which are now starting to reach the marketplace. I expect to see an increase in business opportunities where the addition of graphene provides a significant enhancement to the performance or improvement of a product or application".

Neill Ricketts, CEO of Versarien, commented:  "Since our acquisition of 2-DTech in May 2014 we have worked very closely with the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester to reach the goal of commercialising graphene.  In June 2015 we announced the patent protection for our graphene platelet production process and now just over a year later we have reached the stage where extensive testing has proved the benefit of adding graphene to carbon fibre composite structures to the extent that there is now real demand from commercial customers.  Our supply of graphene to the NGI, coupled with our own dedicated graphene enhanced plastics manufacturing facility, established through our recent acquisition of AAC Cyroma, is just the start of the commercialisation phase.  We intend to significantly scale up our capacity to produce graphene to meet the demand we are seeing, which is only expected to increase."