Natural Fiber Composites Move Towards Mainstream Adoption
The technical end-use applications for long fiber flax continue to expand, especially as reinforcements for composites. France, Belgium, and the Netherlands are responsible for three-quarters of the world’s annual production of 140,000 tons.
At JEC World 2025 in Paris from March 4-6, the Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp hosted the Natural Fibre Village, showcasing its latest technical developments and the products of a number of its member companies. The companies were Bcomp (Switzerland), Demgy (France), Depestele (France), EcoTechnilin (France), Emanuel Lang Composites (France), Flipts en Dobbels (Belgium), Libeco (Belgium), Linificio e Canapificio Nazionale (Italy), Norafin (Germany), Safilin (France) and Terre de Lin (France).
“We are working together with our members towards a common goal – making flax and hemp the preferred sustainable fibers worldwide,” said Julie Pariset, Innovation and CSR Director at the Alliance. “Our verified scientific, economic and sustainability data combines to form support tools that empower industry decision making. Europe represents the lion’s share of global flax production, and we continue to expand our coverage in terms of both hectares and production volume, integrating data accessibility, sustainable transformation and impact calculation tools that will meet evolving market and regulatory demands.”
Customized cabin designs are a key part of automotive OEMs’ push to increase their market share, and Bcomp has been very active in this field recently, with a number of series production seats and interior trim packages introduced in the past year.
Customized Cabins
Materials on display throughout the Natural Fibre Village included new services and products developed specifically for key automotive, architectural and industrial design applications such as 2D woven flax reinforcements, rovings, flax-based thermoplastic tapes and flax reinforcements combining natural fibers and automotive industry waste. In addition, JEC World 2025 highlighted nonwoven reinforcements and bio-sourced flax fillers for automotive OEM structural parts.
Customized cabin designs are a key part of automotive OEMs push to increase their market share, and Bcomp has been very active in this field recently, with a number of series production seats and interior trim packages introduced in the past year.
Already in industrial-scale applications in Polestar and Volvo vehicles, at JEC World 2025, Bcomp showcased ampliTex-PP fabrics, which are being employed in the Cupra Born VZ performance electric vehicles (Evs) as the first fully natural fiber bucket seats seen in the Cupra range. The seatbacks replace an earlier design that used carbon and glass fibers and reduce CO2 emissions by 49%.
Bcomp’s patented range of flax-based reinforcement fabrics – powerRibs and ampliTex – can be used by OEMs as substitutes for standard materials like carbon, glass or plastic. In many applications they offer superior lightweighting and stiffness.
Advantages
The Bcomp materials also offer distinct advantages including high vibration damping and enhanced safety because they will not shatter on impact. By adopting these sustainable solutions and achieving dematerialization through reduced material usage, it’s possible to decrease CO2 emissions across the entire lifecycle of products significantly.
Bcomp has further developed in-house software that can show customer designers textures, patterns and colors and provide a realistic visualization of how the trim sections will appear, reducing development time while ensuring technical feasibility. This software is backed up by full color options and a range of standard and custom weave patterns that drop into existing production equipment and back-injection molding processes.
Concept EV2
Subsequently, at Milan Design Week 2025 in April, Kia unveiled its new Concept EV2 demonstrating the potential for the large-scale adoption of natural fiber-based composites in affordable EVs.
Bcomp has worked closely with Kia’s European designers to develop a custom dark blue color, enhancing the vehicle’s visual appeal with a vibrant colorway. The Kia team used ampliTex specifically in the back seat shell and front seat substructures of the Concept EV2.
The model is scheduled to be launched in 2026 and represents Kia’s aim of redefining expectations for compact EVs via a winning blend of affordability, practicality, and innovative design features with a spacious, multi-configurable interior.
“Our collaboration with Kia on the Concept EV2 is another step towards the mainstream adoption of natural fiber composites in automotive interiors,” says Nicolas Samson, sales manager at Bcomp. “Kia’s forward-thinking approach to mobility aligns perfectly with our mission to push the boundaries of sustainable interior solutions, and together, we’re proving that sustainable, circular materials can enhance both vehicle aesthetics and functionality at scale.”
Sherpa 4X4
Greenlander has meanwhile sold out the initial launch run of its Sherpa 4×4 expedition vehicle, which was one of the biggest and most attention-grabbing exhibits at JEC World 2024. It is now scaling production to cope with market demand.
The Sherpa was developed by partners Greenlander and Greenboats, both based in Bremen, along with investor and flax material specialist Depestele.
Its construction is based on flax fibers and bio-based resins combined with sustainable core materials such as cork, wood and recycled PET foam to create durable and lightweight components. In addition to low impact materials, Greenlander also provides a unique business model, offering the composite items as a service and taking them back at the end of their life to be repurposed or recycled.
Depestele’s acquisition of a minority share in Greenboats is another significant development in the forward motion of natural fiber composites.
Managing 13,000 hectares of flax land in Normandy, family-owned Depestele has been a key player in the flax industry. It sources from more than 750 farmers across several regions and operates three scutching plants focused on the initial processing of flax fibers and combing and manufacturing units.
“Our clients believe in our technology but have demanded a more reliable and scalable supply chain which is being established by our partnership with Depestele,” said Jan Paul Schirmer, director of Greenboats. “Further close partnerships are essential to ensure continued progress.”
With its background as a supplier to the Marine industry, Greenboats is also behind the Circular Structures B2B business for the off-the-shelf supply of natural fiber composite profiles made from flax rovings and plant-based resins. The combination of natural flax fibers and greener resins provides an optimized balance of lightness, stability and sustainability. In many cases, these composites are not just an ecological alternative to conventional materials but also offer similar or even better mechanical properties than competing products.
Microlino
EcoTechnilin has also remarked on its progress in increasing the share of natural fiber composites in vehicles.
In 2008, the Opel Insignia was one of the first vehicles containing EcoTechnilin’s nonwoven-based materials, with 2kg of its flax-based components per vehicle.
By 2016, 6kg of natural fiber material was being included in the E-class Mercedes, primarily in door panels.
Most recently, EcoTechnilin has provided more than 9kg of its materials for the interior of the Microlino electric vehicle developed by Swiss brand Micro.
The two-person Microlino has been designed for ultimate convenience and practicality, taking up just a third of the space of a conventional car to enable it to be parked crosswise virtually anywhere. At the same time, it has a spacious trunk with plenty of room for luggage. It can also be charged just like a smartphone at a conventional socket in four hours, with a range of over 140 miles.
Construction
Flax is also contributing to some notable new architectural projects as the construction industry looks to embrace natural raw materials that can help off-set some of the negative contributions from its traditional material base.
In France, for example, 880 cladding panels form the shading system for the new Cité Scolaire International Jacques Chirac business school in Marseille. These have been made from more than 8,000 square meters of Bcomp’s ampliTex flax, combined with a UV-resistant gel coat, fire-rated polyester resin, and glass fiber reinforcements.
These panels are much lighter than alternative materials, enabling them to be quickly and easily installed on site with substantially less mounting hardware than is traditionally required.
The ITECH Research Pavilion at the University of Stuttgart in Germany is meanwhile based on composite support beams reinforced with flax rovings supplied by Terre de Lin and Demgy’s Flaxcomp perforated flax composite sandwich base panels have been adopted for trials in green roofing modules.
10,000 Companies
The Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp is the only agro-industrial organization that unites the European flax-linen and hemp value chains, uniting over 10,000 specialist companies across 16 countries – from growers to weaving mills.
“The Alliance for European Flax-Linen & Hemp continues to drive the bioeconomy forward, reinforcing the role of flax and hemp as essential materials in the evolution of sustainable composites,” said Valentin Depestele, president of the alliance’s Technical Uses Section. “Our industry has reached new heights in competitiveness, performance and environmental responsibility thanks to the verified Masters of Flax Fibre standard, scientific validation and new tools that support our members. The technical flax and hemp sector now offers manufacturers unparalleled traceability and efficiency, meeting the demands of industrial markets while shaping a cleaner, high-performance future for composites.”
