ABOUT US

FORMAX is an independent, UK-owned manufacturer of textile products based in Leicester, the heartland of the UK’s textile manufacturing industry.

 

FORMAX was founded in 1999 to focus on producing speciality reinforcements for the composite industry, although it inherited the engineering and textile knowledge of a traditional textile business that went back many decades. The company’s largest shareholder is James Dewhurst Ltd, a UK-based manufacturer of industrial textiles that has production facilities in the UK, Eastern Europe and North America.

 

As a UK manufacturer, FORMAX is able to compete in an increasingly global market by becoming more efficient and specialising in areas where others cannot compete:

 

  • We offer a flexible service to our European customers, with short lead-times and low ‘minimum order quantities’
  • We customer-develop most of our products for our customers - we don’t just offer standard products
  • Recent investments have resulted in FORMAX becoming a world leader in the spreading of carbon fibre tows down to very light aerial weights. We are now able to offer lightweight multiaxial fabrics with 75 g/m2 per layer from standard 12k carbon fibres.

Indeed, we export the majority of our products, and have major customers in Europe, N America, the M East, Asia and Australasia.

 

OUR CAPABILITIES

FORMAX has an increasing number of machines, enabling us to offer a variety of technologies:

  • Multiaxial machines – able to manufacture biaxial +/-45, triaxial, and quadiaxial fabrics, with an ability to offer on-line CSM.
  • Biaxial machines – able to offer 0/90 biaxials, with multiple layers of CSM, CFM, or other core materials on their own, or all combined. Also CSM/core/CSM.
  • Carbons – tow-spreading multiaxials, stitched unidirectionals, woven unidirectionals and open meshes.
  • Cutting – we are able to offer kits cut to shape, with or without powder-bonding.
  • Tapes – tapes can be cut on-line or off-line, to most widths and any length
  • Fabric inspection and re-rolling
  • Heat-setting and laminating