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Cambium (El Segundo, Calif., U.S.), a company developing advanced materials like carbon/carbon (C/C) composites for high-performance sectors, has acquired composites company SHD Group (Sleaford, U.K.), creating a global company that combines AI-driven materials innovation with scalable, qualified manufacturing to serve aerospace, defense, energy, high-performance automotive, motorsport, marine and other advanced industrial markets.
SHD operates four sites: one at its U.K. headquarters, two in the U.S. (North Carolina and Oklahoma) and one in the EU (Slovenia). Together with Cambium’s California base, the combined company will have a global innovation and manufacturing footprint capable of serving customers wherever they operate.
The combined company will be headquartered in El Segundo, California, with SHD operating as “SHD, a Cambium company.” Its leadership, operations and customer relationships remain unchanged. Cambium board director Brett Schneider becomes president of SHD and Cambium Composites. SHD founders, Steve and Helen Doughty, continue as director of innovation and director of integration, respectively, to ensure continuity with the SHD team and their customers and suppliers through this next high growth phase. Financial terms were not disclosed.
“Helen and Steve [Doughty] have built a truly amazing company, one that not only fits Cambium’s vision for redefining what is possible with advanced materials, but one that will also be a great cultural fit,” says Cambium co-founder and CEO Simon Waddington. “They have built a fast response time production system that delivers orders ten times faster than competition — even delivering product solutions within 48 hours. The company also has a
palpable ethos of quality and care. For Cambium, all of this adds up to a tectonic impact on day one for our team, partners and customers."
Specific key factors behind the acquisition include:
Global footprint. Qualified manufacturing across the U.S., the U.K. and the EU deliver custom materials up to ten times faster than competitors.
Agile production system. Proprietary, low-waste lines enables rapid changeovers and small-batch to mass production scalability, backed by 100+ global suppliers, minimizing supply chain risk and delivering composite solutions on short lead times.
Proven customer base and culture. Hundreds of aerospace, motorsport, marine and industrial customers, as well as a shared focus on speed, service and innovation.
In-house engineering. SHD designs and builds proprietary machines and processes fast and affordably, enabling efficient expansion and upgrades for high-performance advanced composite materials.
Sustainable development. SHD adds deep expertise in sustainable material development demanded by many aerospace and other industrial companies, using advanced resin systems and low-waste manufacturing processes that complement Cambium’s mission to engineer high-performance materials with reduced environmental impact.
“Cambium and SHD combining redefines the future of advanced materials development and production at scale and provides legacy and emerging customers a growth enabler that does not exist today,” concludes Brett Schneider, president of SHD and Cambium Composites.
Through the EU-funded DiMAT project, companies like unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) developer Acceligence Ltd. (Nicosia, Cyprus), and advanced composites manufacturer Cetma Composites Srl (Brindisi, Italy) are demonstrating how digital twins, simulation tools and renewable composite materials are able to transform UAV development for SMEs. Concluding at the end of December 2025, the partners’ pilot project are now exploring commercialization efforts.
DiMAT – Digital Modeling and Simulation for Design, Processing and Manufacturing of Advanced Materials was a 36-month project supporting industry’s transition toward holistic industrial digitalization. The development of digital modeling, simulation and optimization technologies for each stage of the material value chain — design, processing and manufacturing — anticipated the improvement of quality, sustainability, effectiveness and competitiveness of materials.
Project consortia demonstrated and implemented four pilots, or industrial testbeds, representing four relevant material manufacturing sectors (polymer, composites, glass and graphite) to prove their applicability in real-world market environment conditions:
Pilot 1: Synethetic textiles production (polymer) run by Natureplast SAS and Tecnored
Pilot 2: UAV manufacturing with advanced composite materials (composites) run by Acceligence Ltd., Cetma Composites and Cetma
Pilot 3: Innovation glass forming process in digital environment (glass) run by Hegla-Hanic GmbH
Pilot 4: Speeding up the new product development process (graphite) run by Imerys Graphite & Carbon.
The Acceligence and Cetma Composites pilot demonstrates the power and versatility of the DiMAT Digital Toolkit when used to develop high-performance composite UAV structures (more about the pilot’s objectives here). Typically requiring expensive design tools, specialist modeling knowledge and lengthy testing cycles, DiMAT now makes it possible for small- to medium-sized companies to engage in advanced composite design with the same sophistication once reserved for major aerospace players.
Via the partners’ open digital toolbox, which includes, among other things, the Materials Designer, Materials Modeller, Materials Processing Simulator and Digital Twin for Process Control, smaller composite manufacturers are able to:
Simulate composite behavior before manufacturing
Optimize material compositions based on real performance needs
Tune process parameters digitally rather than by trial and error
Integrate data seamlessly across materials, design and production.
Using DiMAT’s Simulation & Optimisation Suite, users are also able to:
Predict structural behavior (strength, stiffness, load response)
Simulate composite layups, curing cycles and process deviations
Identify defects or design weaknesses early
Cut down on the number of physical prototypes needed.
This has the potential to dramatically shorten UAV R&D timelines from months to weeks, making innovation faster, cheaper and more reliable.
Beyond speed and affordability, Acceligence and Cetma Composites are also pioneering sustainability in UAV manufacturing by testing renewable and recyclable materials for structural components, analyzing mechanical performance with DiMAT sub-models; manufacturing viability through digital process simulation; and life cycle cost and environmental impact via DiMAT’s MEC-LCA module. This enables data-driven decisions about material selection and production processes, ensuring UAV structures can be both lightweight and environmentally responsible.
Now, at DiMAT’s conclusion, the pilot companies are working on further deployment of their technologies and will continue working with solution providers to refine and adjust the toolkits to their operational needs. Acceligence and Cetma Composites believe that the breakthroughs achieved will have wide-reaching impacts across composites manufacturing, lightweight mobility solutions and Europe’s broader shift toward greener, more agile industrial processes.
