It was that time again. The Composites United CMC community met in Stade as part of the Ceramic Composites March Meetings. In addition to a rather impressive factory tour at Airbus, the Hybrid CMC (Hagen Klemm) and OxiCer (Arne Rüdinger) working groups met together with around 50 participants. Almost the entire CU-Ox/Ox community was here. We also discussed the life cycle assessment of CMC (CU EcoCeramic status meeting). The PhD working group (Katrin Bock) and the Reinforcement of Ceramic Materials working group (Dietmar Koch) also met.

At the general meeting, we presented our upcoming work, as well as other topics. In addition to a study on the market potential of Ox/Ox, we are working on the 2nd edition of the CMC market report, a new technology roadmap and a recommendation for action on the LCA of Cf-CMC.

In addition, a new Executive Board was elected for the term of office from 2024 to 2026: Christian Wilhelmi from Airbus Defence and Space, Stephanie Pfeifer from Deutsche Institute für Textil- und Faserforschung Denkendorf (DITF), Philipp Goetz from CVT, Stephan Schmidt-Wimmer from ArianeGroup and Dietmar Koch (Chairman) from Universität Augsburg. Congratulations, I look forward to working with you! Special thanks go to the retiring board members Wolfgang Rossner, Linda Klopsch and Florian Reichert from Schunk Group: your expertise, your humor and charm, but also your focus on the cause were outstanding. It was a great support for the community. I will miss you.

A highlight of the March meetings was certainly the first presentation of the Ralph Hufschmied Award. The “Ralph” is awarded annually by the boards of Spitzencluster MAI Carbon and Ceramic Composites in memory of the late pioneer and innovator Ralph Hufschmied, former CEO of Hufschmied Zerspanungssysteme GmbH for particularly outstanding achievements. The 1st prize winner is Walter Pritzkow. He founded his own company Walter E.C. Pritzkow Spezialkeramik 30 years ago and has been one of the world’s most creative and innovative players in the Ox/Ox sector ever since. Dear Walter: Congratulations! You absolutely deserve it. And tanks for the dinner! Dear Christel Hufschmied, thank you very much for letting us give Ralph this honor.

I would like to explicitly thank Marc Fette from Composite Technology Center / CTC GmbH (An Airbus Company) for his outstanding support on site. Just as many thanks to my colleagues: Freija S., Leonie Weiblen, Katharina Lechler, Rolf Heusing and Sophie Nösler. None of this would have worked without you.