On 2 & 3 October 2018, more than 100 participants from Belgium and abroad gathered at the Park Inn Hotel in Liège Airport to attend the 2018 international conference on COMPOSITES. The conference was organised by CENTEXBEL, the Textiles Competence Centre, and provided a platform to the participants form the industry and research world to discuss the exceptional characteristics of these new materials and to highlight the challenges of their production.

'Virtual Engineering' is a key technology in developing composite materials that are already fully used by the aerospace industry and in sports. Other sectors, including the automotive and construction sectors, are also interested in the exceptional opportunities of composite materials. 
In addition to conventional resources, biobased materials are finding their way to composites, which was presented as part of the EU Horizon 2020 BIO4SELF  project. More than 30 speakers contributed to the success of the event.

Many companies took the opportunity to present their activities in the composites sector during the pitch session.

The first edition of the international conference on Composites was held with the support of Skywin cluster, Plastiwin cluster, CCI, Agoria federation and ITF of the University of Liège.

The two-days conference was concluded with a visit to the JD'C Innovation workshops, located in the Grâce-Hollogne zoning, an innovative and competitive SME serving the Aeronautics and Defence sectors with the objective of providing jobs to as many disadvantaged people as possible.