Sustainability through lightweight structure and durability - glass and carbon fibers

Glass and carbon fibers are consisting of numerous fine fibers or glass or carbon. They can be used for various applications due to their strength and corrosion resistance. We can find these materials e.g. in thermal, electrical and sound insulation, roofing panels, automobile bodies, sports equipment, boat hulls, fiber-reinforced plastic tanks and wind turbine blades. In places where there is a need for a high durability combined with the lightweight structure. 

Ahlstrom-Munksjö has three plants using glass and carbon fibers as main raw material. In among these three plants, Mikkeli is the only Ahlstrom-Munksjö plant producing woven products. It has nearly 60 weaving machines and it employs approximately 110 people. Weaving is different in many ways compared to other production processes in other plants.

Most of our machines produce about 200-600 meters per minute. Weaving machines are slow compared to paper machines. A weaving machine produces 0.5-4 meters per minute of glass or carbon fiber fabric. Mikkeli Finland, we produce glass and carbon fiber fabrics. The plant’s biggest customers are in wind energy and marine industries. Remaining two are Karhula in Finland and Tver in Russia, where we produce glass fiber tissue, which is a glass fiber nonwoven. It is mainly used in vinyl flooring.

Almost 100% of the production is exported outside of Finland e.g. to Germany, Italy and Denmark.