In a move aimed at accelerating advanced manufacturing, the US Department of Energy has contributed USD 70m to a new public-private partnership that will drive development of advanced fibre-reinforced polymer composites and develop low-cost, high-production and energy-efficient manufacturing and recycling processes. The Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation (IACMI; http://iacmi.org) has secured another USD 189m from partners – including Volkswagen, Dow, DowAksa, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, among others – and will be led by the University of Tennessee (UTK, Knoxville, Tennessee / USA; www.tennessee.edu). All in all, more than 90 companies across the entire supply chain are supporting the projects.

IACMI is regionally organised around five focus areas – vehicles research will be centred at Michigan State University in Michigan, while wind turbines activities are located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. The University of Dayton Research Institute in Ohio is home to compressed gas storage, with design, modelling and simulation situated at Purdue University in Indiana. Last but not least, research into composite materials and processing technology will be found at UTK in Tennessee as well as the University of Kentucky.

US president Barack Obama announced IACMI’s creation during a visit to Tennessee-based additives and colorants producer Techmer PM (Knoxville; www.techmerpm.com), one of the companies partnering with the institute. Specialised in 3D printing, Techmer recently produced a full-sized printed electric car.