Company Background

Spinning-composites has been created to take advantage of GKN’s pioneering development of composite driveshafts for automotive applications, and is applying that knowhow across the complete range of industrial drive applications.

GKN introduced Composite Propeller Shafts on the Renault Espace Quadra in 1988 and have since produced well over 100,000 shafts for this and other automotive applications.  The Composite Disc Coupling was developed by GKN’s Automotive R&D centre in the UK and has been introduced to diverse industrial applications like wind turbines, motorsport, dynamometers and cooling towers.
 
The groundbreaking success for the spinning-composites team was the development of the Composite Disc Coupling for wind turbine driveshafts.  This is a highly demanding application for power transmission systems – if components are successful here then it is proof of quality and performance for other ranges of industrial applications.
 
The team’s achievement was recognized by the Design Council in the UK, who selected the Composite Disc Coupling as a ‘Millennium Product’.  This is a UK Government backed initiative to reward innovative products that are pioneering in their fields and challenge existing conventions.
 
So even though spinning-composites is a new operation, it has a powerful background of success and experience to draw on.