Finding new markets for carbon fiber

COMPOSITE SKETCH: David Schwartz, president of GMT Composites Inc., shows off one of his company’s sailboat booms. GMT was founded in 1984 by a group of fiberglass and composites experts. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
COMPOSITE SKETCH: David Schwartz, president of GMT Composites Inc., shows off one of his company’s sailboat booms. GMT was founded in 1984 by a group of fiberglass and composites experts. / PBN FILE PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Per capita, there may be more square feet of carbon fiber in Rhode Island’s East Bay than anywhere else in New England.
A boatbuilding hub for more than a century, the coastline from Warren to Newport is now home to marine-industry manufacturers happy to utilize their knowledge of composite materials in applications for the air and ground as well as water.
GMT Composites of Bristol typifies Rhode Island’s increasingly diversified, modern, marine manufacturer with approximately half of the company’s sales coming from customers with no connection to the ocean.
“When I first became involved in the company in 1990, advanced composites were a new field and the marine industry was really leading all industries, even aerospace,” said GMT Composites owner David Schwartz. “We were able to utilize materials and processes for very large structures, like 100-foot masts, where the aerospace guys were afraid to use a new material because if it failed there would be a disaster.”
GMT was founded in 1984 by a group of fiberglass and composites experts, including Eric Goetz, now of nearby Goetz Composites.
At the time, composites were still a relatively new technology and GMT was one of the companies exploring the different things you could do with them.
Goetz was focused on building whole hulls from these new materials, while his partners saw an opportunity in building boat components, such as rudders and spars.
In 1990, Schwartz bought out Goetz and took over GMT, while Goetz founded Goetz Composites, also in Bristol, which has gone on to build hulls for America’s Cup yachts.
But the component business has been good to GMT, which has made carbon-fiber booms, masts, rudders and boarding ramps for racing sailboats and mega-yachts.
And applying carbon-fiber techniques to a variety of smaller products has led GMT naturally into diversifying beyond marine applications.
GMT’s list of projects now includes medical devices, computer-chip pallets, robot arm hands and Navy sonar housings.
The company’s sales are now almost evenly divided between marine and nonmarine uses, according to sales and marketing director Jonathan Craig.
“We have always done projects that use the expertise we have,” Craig said. “On the government, nonmarine side it has been quiet recently with the sequester and we anticipate some pent-up demand.” Carbon fiber is in many ways an evolution of fiberglass, with both involving reinforcing strands set within plastic.
But the carbon strands in carbon fiber make it much stronger and stiffer than glass strands. And where fiberglass resin is set with a catalyst, carbon fiber is set at extremely high temperatures, making its use in production more complex and capital intensive.
GMT purchases its carbon fiber in sheets that look a little like tar paper from a company in California, and cures it in a 250-degree oven.
In addition to GMT and Goetz, there are a handful of marine-based fiberglass and carbon-fiber manufacturing shops, including Hall Spars, C&C Fiberglass and Clear Carbon & Components Inc., all within a few blocks of each other in Bristol.
Craig said the relationship between the Bristol companies is mostly competitive, especially on the marine side, with the only collaboration coming through the use of the same suppliers and secondary services.
When the use of carbon fiber on boats began in the 1980s, it was mostly reserved for custom-racing sailboats.
But more recently as the price has come down and the market for custom-racing boats has diminished, the high-end recreational market has become increasingly interested in the material because of its potential weight savings over metal. A lighter mast is not only faster, but more stable with less of a pendulum effect.
Looking ahead, Craig said GMT has high hopes for a power-furling sailboat boom, which contains the coiled sail while not in use, and is lighter than a similar device inside a mast.
The recession devastated the yacht market, but Schwartz said now that the economy is improving, the pent-up demand from several slow years should mean growth in the marine side of the business.
Off the water, Schwartz said the biggest challenge is convincing potential customers that carbon fiber can work in ways it hasn’t before.
“In nonmarine there is a lot of growth [opportunity] in finding potential customers with an open mind that have thought about how the properties of carbon fiber can help their industry,” he said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
GMT Composites
OWNER: David Schwartz
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Carbon-fiber manufacturer
LOCATION: 48 Ballou Blvd., Bristol
EMPLOYEES: Eight full time
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1984
ANNUAL SALES: NA

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