Published 2/13/2025

Composites specialist celebrates 30 years of CFRP innovation

JEC World 2025: CompoTech PLUS is recognizing three decades serving the composites industry, highlighting latest material and fiber winding technology developments.

Edited by: Grace Nehls

Senior Managing Editor, CompositesWorld and Products Finishing

This year, CompoTech PLUS spol s.r.o’s (Sušice, Czech Republic) JEC booth is celebrating the company’s 30 years in business, showcasing its development of carbon fiber processing technologies and custom-designed, high-performance, carbon fiber composite components over the years. The company is also promoting its newest noncrimp fabric technical material innovation.

CompoTech says its latest material development offers OEMs and the wider composites market an alternative to conventional loom technology for producing a custom-made technical fabric preform for prototypes, providing a commercially viable way to enable innovative composite NPD projects to progress to TRL 6 and beyond.

Throughout the show, Dr. Humphrey Carter, head of business development, along with the founding owners, Ondrej Uher and Vitek Sprdlik, are also on hand to discuss the company’s six-axis AFL and advanced winding technologies, automated machine production capabilities for making bespoke performs and finished components, and to find out more about current and future market needs.

While still studying engineering in 1995, Ondrej Uher and Vitek Sprdlik developed their first fiber winding machine.

CompoTech is further promoting its 30^th anniversary, an important milestone for its co-founders, Uher and Sprdlik, who met in the early 1990s while studying engineering at the Czech Technical University. While still studying, they developed their first fiber winding machine incorporating the company’s current zero-degree fiber placement capabilities. The first successful application was a lighter, stronger paddle shaft for whitewater canoeing. Uher and Sprdlik, representing the Czech Republic, used it in summer 1995 during the White Water Canoeing World Championship in Bala, Wales.

Over the last 30 years, CompoTech has demonstrated a committment to continuous innovation in fiber processing technologies — replacing steel and aluminum with carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) in aerospace, defense, racing and leisure marine, sports equipment, industrial automation, machine tools and specialist metrology equipment.

The company highlights key developments to date below:

1995 – Compo Tech Plus spol. s.r.o. registered as a trading company in spring 1995 with its factory in Sušice. This location is also where its first fiber winding machine production operation was set up.
1998 – First continuous loop connection was wound by hand for a hang glider frame application. A carbon fiber composite spar was developed for a “topless” design hang glider produced by British company Airwave Gliders.
2000 – First America’s Cup racing yacht application with a CFRP headfoil for the Italian America’s Cup team, Prada Challenge, leading on to various projects with other America’s Cup racing teams in future years.
2001 – R&D development and winding of delicate graphite “pitch fibers” without damaging them. In this way, CompoTech was able to retain their ultra-high modulus properties, enabling lightweight CFRP parts to be designed using both pitch and PAN fibers. This processing innovation opened the door to many new industrial applications.
2002 – First automotive robot press line application for the production of Bilsing Automation’s carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy composite T-boom, designed for press line end-of-arm technology (EOAT) and X-bar beams.
2003 – First wind turbine blade application: CompoTech developed Aerolaminates’ (now Vestas’) thick-walled carbon fiber shafts for wind turbine blade tip attachments using zero-degree axial fibers, which were 50% stronger than other products tested. CompoTech proved itself as a reliable OEM supplier of large-volume parts.
2005 – CompoTech’s R&D collaboration with Czech Technical University, Prague (CVUT) focused on the use of axial fibers in beam internal structures and surface pressing technologies to produce stronger, stiffer square beam profiles, primarily for industrial applications.
2006 – R&D focus on creating parts with high axial content and thick profiles to cope with high shear resulted in the development of a 3D cellular composite, produced using overwound off-axis layers of pitch fibers pressed into a structural carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy profile.
2011 – CompoTech moves to a new, purpose-built, facility. The new site provided space for more R&D and larger production capabilities, including developing a 12-meter vertical winding prototype machine.
2012 – First carbon fiber gantry structures: Beam technology was applied to Y-axis gantry structures. CompoTech designed and produced a lightweight CFRP traverse for a high-performance laser cutting machine for Powertech (now Eagle Laser). The carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy design achieved 6G acceleration, making it the fastest machine on the market at the time.
2013 – New applications combined wound pitch fiber and steel to create “hybrid” composite-metal machine tool spindle shafts and CNC milling tools. This process development was used to design a four-disc cutter, light enough to use on unmodified CNC milling machines, increasing productivity by up to 70%.
2018 – Innovative six-axis robot winding. CompoTech introduced its innovative winding system developed with FANUC robot integration and proprietary control software.
2019 – Development project between CompoTech and Aero Vodochody Aerospace for the Czech Aero L 39ng jet aircraft. This resulted in the design of a carbon fiber composite aileron structure and production process which required no secondary bonded ribs or spars. The project was honored with a JEC Innovation Award in 2019.
2020 – CompoTech combined its six-axis fiber placement and integrated loop technology (ILT) connection process for the CDuro carbon fiber composite mountian bike design. The CDuro bike was commercialized in 2024.
2021 – Previous R&D work on a tubular CFRP telescopic sailing boat mast demonstrator project was used to develop a retractable telescopic mast with a deployment system. Carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy retractable telescopic masts for the camera were manufactured and fitted onto mobile surveillance vehicles currently being used by various national police bodies.
2022 – CompoTech expands to supply custom AFL machine: The engineering team work with PalletX to develop a custom-built “turn-key,” automated, seven-axis fiber layup machine. The process was developed for carbon fiber lattices with advanced winding technologies, automated production control systems and software.
2023 – CompoTech developed an innovative new design foam cored integrated CFRP beam for the award-winning Kongsberg Ultimate machine, which is currently the highest productivity digital cutting table on the market for packaging and display materials.
2024 – Customized, advanced winding machine was developed for long-standing customer and optical technology company, Meopta. The custom-built platform was ordered to provide Meopta with in-house composite component development and production capabilities, technically supported by CompoTech.
2025 – As well as being able to produce finished carbon fiber components, CompoTech’s highly flexible automated winding machine can also cost-effectively produce noncrimp fabrics or variably shaped dry fiber preforms from carbon, graphite and aramid fibers, using as little as a single bobbin of the technical fiber specified.