Aussie firm to develop lightweight seats

An Australian-listed company with links to aerospace and defence is joining forces with a Tier 1 parts supplier for the development and production of lightweight seat backs for the global automotive industry.

Quickstep Holdings, based at Bankstown Airport in Sydney, has announced it will work together with Futuris Automotive Group on seat backs formed from composite material – carbon fibre – that will be as much as 50 per cent lighter than conventional units currently in production.

The new seat backs will be manufactured at Quickstep's production facility at Waurn Ponds, near Geelong, commencing from the middle of next year.

Quickstep has been a parts supplier to the local automotive industry, manufacturing a carbon-fibre air intake duct for Ford Australia, as well as composite parts for the Thales Hawkei light armoured patrol vehicle (pictured) used by the Australian Army.

Through its contact with Futuris – global parts supplier active in the USA, Mexico, China, Thailand and Australia – Quickstep hopes to sell its lightweight seat backs to Futuris customers as diverse as Ford, GM, Chery, SAIC, Tesla and Faraday Future.

"This composite seat project will allow Quickstep to demonstrate the production rate and quality of structural automotive parts we can produce for vehicle programs greater than 20,000 parts per annum," said Quickstep CEO, David Marino.

"This is an extension of the recent developments in our tooling, equipment and materials solutions for our 'next-generation' RapidQure process, offering volume manufacturing systems for the automotive industry.

Futuris is taking the lead in the project, as the partner responsible for design, specifications and testing. Quickstep has begun work, with a sample of the seat back already produced at the manufacturing plant in Waurn Ponds.

It's more welcome news for the manufacturing industry in the Geelong region, following word that another supplier, Carbon Revolution, is exporting its lightweight wheels for fitment to Ford's Shelby Mustang. Parts manufacturers in and around Geelong have received unstinting support from Ford and the Victorian government up to and since the end of engine production at Ford's plant in Geelong and, earlier this month, the closure of Ford's vehicle assembly plant in the Melbourne suburb of Campbellfield.

Picture of Thales Hawkei courtesy of Michal Derela/Wikimedia Commons