In first half 2025, Kitemill made a decisive step forward by transitioning its composite production to a new industrial partner: High Performance Composites (HPC), led by Paal Fediuk. This move elevates our production capabilities, enabling stronger, lighter, and more consistent structural components—crucial in the evolving race for Airborne Wind Energy (AWE) performance.
While composite materials have always been central to Kitemill's systems, the shift to pre-impregnated carbon fiber (prepreg) marks a significant upgrade. Prepreg technology enables automated, repeatable, and quality-controlled production, reducing the fault risks associated with traditional hand layup methods. These challenges have become an increasing concern across the wind energy sector, contributing to the recent years' higher operational costs and valuation write-downs 1..
The collaboration between Kitemill and HPC has laid the foundation for a more industrialized and scalable production approach. At the heart of this upgrade is the joint acquisition and installation of an 8-meter autoclave, now operational at HPC’s facility—enabling full wing-length curing in a single, high-precision run.
This setup not only supports the KM2 build program but also brings immediate benefits to KM1: enhanced load margins, better automation testing tolerance, and later-stage weight reduction for optimized power curve performance.
As Airborne Wind Energy technology matures, load control and structural performance will continue to be critical competence areas—not just in terms of performance, but also safety, scalability, and economic viability. For Kitemill, these areas are under constant development and will remain a strategic focus as we advance our platform and technology roadmap.
This manufacturing breakthrough took place in parallel with record-breaking operational performance. In Q1 2025, Kitemill achieved a new high in system reliability and uptime, reflecting not just a step forward in technology—but in organizational execution.
“What we’ve seen over the past months is a result of team commitment across all areas,” says Marius Dyrseth, CTO of Kitemill.
“The ability to deliver operational records while upgrading to a new production method says everything about the people behind it. We are improving how we work—and how we work together.”
This alignment of technical milestones with live performance shows how Kitemill continues to move the airborne wind sector forward—by building competence, delivering results, and scaling capability at the same time.
As part of this shift to a new production method, Kitemill is also capitalizing on long-term progress in material technology. Our lead mechanical engineer, Sture Smidt, highlights how carbon fiber performance—particularly tensile strength and stiffness—has nearly doubled over the past three decades. The industry has seen an almost linear development curve, pointing to not only the superior fibers we have access to today, but also what we can expect going forward.
This context is critical: airborne wind platforms like ours will increasingly rely on cutting-edge structural materials. And the ongoing improvement in fiber performance is not just a resource—it reflects a broader, predictable learning curve in composite technology that Kitemill is positioned to benefit from.
By leveraging state-of-the-art fibers and a scalable prepreg production approach, Kitemill is securing both the next-generation performance and the manufacturability required for airborne wind energy to become a robust industrial technology.
1. Sources:
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