September 25, 2026 (Atlanta, GA) – CAMX – The Composites and Advanced Materials Expo announced the winners of the 13th annual CAMX Awards during the Opening General Session at CAMX 2026 in Atlanta, Georgia. The CAMX Awards recognize two innovations with the potential to significantly impact composites and advanced materials. The awards are divided into two categories that embody the spirit of CAMX – Combined Strength and Unsurpassed Innovation.
The Combined Strength Award recognizes a composites product that demonstrates a team approach by bringing together knowledge, resources, and talent to create an exceptional use of composite materials that solves a problem. The Unsurpassed Innovation Award celebrates a novel product design that uses low-cost materials for high-volume applications or high-performance materials for low-volume applications and has the potential to significantly impact existing markets or open new ones.
The 2026 Combined Strength Award winner is ENGEL Austria GmbH’s High-Rate Thermoplastic Composite Drone Rotor Blades.
The next-generation manufacturing method uses thermoplastic sandwich injection molding to produce lightweight, high-performance drone rotor blades in a single automated step. Continuous carbon fiber-reinforced tapes form the load-bearing outer skins, while a chemically foamed, short-fiber compound creates the lightweight core. Noise-reducing features, including serrated trailing edges and leading-edge tubercles, are molded directly into the blade using interchangeable mold inserts.
The process achieves a 45-second cycle time and can produce more than 360,000 blades annually from one machine. At full production capacity, costs can reach as low as $1.47 per blade. The all-thermoplastic material system also enables production scrap and end-of-life components to be recycled. Life cycle assessment results indicate a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of up to 50% compared with conventional prepreg compression molding and resin transfer molding processes.
The winning blade was developed through a collaboration that brought together expertise in injection molding, aerospace engineering, tooling, simulation, aeroacoustics, and sustainability. Partners included ENGEL Austria GmbH, FACC Operations GmbH, TU Wien, Plastic Innovation GmbH, Energieinstitut an der JKU Linz, ALPEX Technologies GmbH, and Mitsui Chemicals.
The 2026 Unsurpassed Innovation Award winner is James Cropper Advanced Materials Ltd. and Carbon Fiber Recycling, LLC’s Aligned Recycled Carbon Fiber Delivering High-Performance Composites at Industrial Scale.
The innovation introduces UNIMAT™, a highly aligned discontinuous carbon fiber material made from recycled and production-induced waste feedstocks. James Cropper’s proprietary VECTIS™ technology achieves more than 95% fiber alignment, transforming recycled carbon fiber into a consistent, high-performance reinforcement suitable for advanced composite applications.
The material combines structural performance, manufacturability, and circularity for aerospace, advanced air mobility, automotive, sporting goods, and consumer applications. Its aligned, discontinuous-fiber architecture supports complex geometries and high-throughput manufacturing processes, including resin transfer molding, stamping, prepreg, and thermoplastic consolidation. The material is compatible with both thermoset and thermoplastic systems.
The collaboration combines Carbon Fiber Recycling’s proprietary process for recovering and refining carbon fiber from manufacturing waste with James Cropper’s industrial-scale fiber alignment and advanced materials manufacturing capabilities. Together, the companies have created a vertically integrated supply chain capable of producing more than 2 million square meters of UNIMAT annually, helping manufacturers reduce dependence on virgin carbon fiber while bringing recycled materials into higher-value structural and semi-structural applications.
For more information about the 2026 CAMX Award winners and finalists, visit thecamx.org/awards.