A Gold Award winner that pushed hybrid lightweight design forward: Brose and FuPro

Back in 2019, Brose Fahrzeugteile received the MATERIALICA Gold Award in the category Surface & Technology (Process) for FuPro – a technology that demonstrated how sophisticated composite structures could combine lightweight design, automation and resource-efficient production.

Within the FuPro joint project, Brose and its partners developed a process that made it possible for the first time to integrate hollow profiles with continuous fibre reinforcement into hybrid injection-moulded structures.

The approach combined thermoplastic composite hollow profiles, organo sheets and long-fibre-reinforced plastics in an automated production chain. Particularly remarkable: the highly integrated structure required only two main tools – a consolidation tool and an injection-moulding tool – potentially replacing a considerably more complex conventional production chain involving several sheet-metal components, forming steps, assembly processes and painting.

The technology was demonstrated with a belt-integral seat-back structure. Crash tests confirmed the suitability of the composite structure for dynamic loads, while the demonstrator achieved a weight reduction of around 30% compared with a conventional steel design.

For Brose, the FuPro project was an impressive example of how material innovation and manufacturing technology can be developed together from the filament right through to the finished component.

Seven years later, the project is also an interesting reminder of what the MATERIALICA Design + Technology Award has been recognising since 2003: technologies that often anticipate developments which become increasingly important for industry in the years that follow.

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Could your material, product or manufacturing process be one of the innovations we will look back on in a few years’ time?

Applications for the MATERIALICA Design + Technology Award 2026 are still possible until August 31, 2026.

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