WINNER: Lighter pickup boxes -- no liner required
Continental Structural Plastics
Auburn Hills , MI
2020 - PACE Award Winner
Innovation: CarbonPro pickup box
First customer: GMC Sierra Denali
Continental Structural Plastics, a Teijin Group company, has developed an advanced manufacturing process to mass-produce a pickup box made from a thermoplastic carbon-fiber composite.
The resulting cargo area, introduced by GM, boasts best-in-class dent, scratch and corrosion resistance and requires no painting or bedliner. Weight savings is 60 to 100 pounds compared with steel.
High-volume production of carbon-fiber composite material is a new science. Continental Structural Plastics’ process allows for engineered scrap to be easily recycled and reintroduced as needed. That has allowed it to achieve molding cycle times of as low as one minute.
Website: cspplastics.com