The JEC Composites Innovation Awards annually honor the most innovative and ambitious collaborative projects in the composite materials industry each year. This year's winners in 11 categories were announced on January 12, 2026, at the JEC World Premiere in Paris. The winner of the “Automotive & Road Transportation – Parts” category is the BMW Group's “BMW M Natural Fiber Composites” project, in which SGL Carbon is involved with a resin and prepreg system.
The result of close collaboration with the BMW Group, Bcomp Ltd., Cobra Advanced Composites CO., LTD, and PPG Wörwag Coatings GmbH & Co. KG. is production-ready natural fiber composites made from renewable, flax-based raw materials. In particular, visible exterior and interior parts can be easily manufactured from flax fibers.
Prepregs made from Natural Fibers
SGL Carbon developed its own resin and prepreg system for this purpose at its Meitingen and Willich sites, which improves durability, visual quality, and processability by overcoming the typical moisture sensitivity of natural fiber composite materials.
“The high moisture absorption of flax fibers was one of the biggest challenges, alongside the typical extensive requirements for automotive visible components. We developed a special transparent resin system that is particularly resistant to and tolerant of the high moisture content of natural fibers. This ensures not only an attractive component appearance but also the good mechanical and thermal properties of the composite material,” explains Dr. Thomas Meinhardt, Team Lead Technical Marketing Prepregs at SGL Carbon. “We congratulate the BMW Group on this award and are proud to contribute our prepregs to the project.”
The use of natural fiber composites significantly reduces both the CO₂e footprint and the component weight. Compared to CFRP, a CO₂e reduction of around 40% can be achieved in production, with additional end-of-life considerations.
