Staffordshire materials technology company, Ceram, has recently launched a new service - lightweighting - to help its clients cut material and transport costs by producing lighter products.
Although a relatively new concept, certain industries, such as aerospace, have already adopted lightweighting as a way of not only pushing up margins by reducing material and production costs, but also to produce more environmentally-friendly products.
Ceram's team of experts uses their material and industry knowledge and the latest in design optimisation software to develop products that use less material whilst retaining, and often improving, their performance characteristics.
Oliver Skipper, Product Manager, Materials, at Ceram says:
"Relentless innovation is going to be the key to the future success of our clients and materials development is going to be central to that. Designing better performing and novel lighter products helps our clients to both reduce costs and to differentiate themselves from their competitors.
"Lightweighting also helps to reduce the burden of sourcing new material streams and supply routes, something which clients spend an increasing amount of time on as raw materials become increasingly scarce.
"Our service goes far behind the design stage as we can also produce product prototypes and trial and optimise new processing technologies."
Ceram has produced a white paper on lightweighting, free to download at www.ceram.com/lightweight