PARIS — June 21, 2019 — JEC Forum Chicago 2019, with its new format combining business meetings and conference sessions was a great success. In fact, with 201 delegates and 490 business meetings organized on site, it reveals that North American composites industrials value this new format.
JEC Forum Chicago 2019 Key Figures:
- 201 delegates
- 400 professional visits
- 490 Business Meetings
- 29 Speakers
- 10 Startups
- Innovation awards
Business and Knowledge all at once
The forum was the occasion for sponsors to showcase their solutions, industry buyers from all the composites value-chain to easily meet during pre-arranged business, without mentioning a great participation of Top buyers from Arevo, Bollinger Motors, Bouygues – CBNA: Civil & Building North America, and Florida Department of Transportation and John Deere. All confirmed that their meetings were very successful and would be leading to prolific cooperation in the future.
“Our experience has been fantastic, being able to utilize interview schedule system has paid off tremendously. Our booth has been well occupied with several industry leaders coming and looking for unique and dedicated solutions”, quoted David Shippee from Composite Fabrics of America.
Not to mention the official visit of the French Deputy Consul General, Frédéric Cholé, along with a delegation of Business France in North America (the organization fostering French businesses abroad), who were very enthusiastic about the dynamism of the composites industry and the startup competition.
Finally, the conference sessions were the playground of world class speakers from MIT and Stanford University speaking mainly about the latest developments and researches on composite materials in Ground Transportation and Construction. Experts from Bloomberg, Chomarat, Hennecke, IACMI McKinsey, Lanxess, and Shell also took the stage to host compelling conferences on the future of composites.
“The conversation between looking forward academics, researchers, pioneering companies and just the broad industry is critical in our sector, and JEC Forum Chicago is an incredible platform for that,” said Mark Goulthorpe, Chairman of the construction sessions, from the MIT Architecture Department.
Celebrating innovation: JEC Innovation Awards and Startup Booster winners
For the past 15 years, JEC Innovation Awards have rewarded the best cutting-edge and ingenious projects using composites to their full potential in different categories. For this edition of JEC Forum Chicago, the winners of the 4 categories were rewarded on Wednesday right after a very inspiring speech given by Dirk Ahlborn, CEO of Hyperloop TT. “Events like JEC ones are amazing because you meet the guys that actually know what they are doing, that are the experts. Mingling with people and exchanging ideas is the secret recipe to success,” said Dirk Ahlborn after his speech.
The JEC Innovation awards winners by categories are: Mobility: KTM-TECHNOLOGIES GmbH – Austria Building: GAZECHIM COMPOSITES IBERICA – Spain Automotive: Surface Generation – United Kingdom Infrastructure: Carbo-Link AG – Switzerland
The ceremony of the first round of the Startup Booster World Tour ended the 2-day event by recognizing 3 of the most promising startups in North America developing new composites solutions; the Gold Winneris Continuous Composites (Continuous Fiber 3D Printing Technology): the Silver Winner is Vartega (Recycler of Advanced Material) and the Bronze winner, Visolis (Carbon Negative Materials). All of them won the chance to showcase their work at JEC World 2020 in March 2020 with the Gold winner competing for the finals.
“JEC Forum Chicago is a unique event in the world of composites bringing together all the value chain in the US. This edition was great in terms of content, exchange and innovative solutions. We thank all our participants for their enthusiasm and collaboration” says Nicolas Baudry, JEC Group Events Director for North America.
Posted June 21, 2019
Source: JEC Group
