A UNIQUE carbon fabric from Sweden, TeXtreme, could substantially reduce the weight of existing aircraft and thereby enable significant savings in fuel costs for the airlines while contributing to a greener world, says Oxeon – developer and producer of the product.

A conservative replacement of current traditional materials with TeXtreme carbon fibre fabrics, for example in composite panels in aircraft, could lower the weight of aircraft to the extent that potential fuel cost savings could be in excess of $56 million per annum for 20 major airlines, it says.

The reduction of CO2 emissions, resulting from weight savings of this magnitude, is enormous, it adds.

TeXtreme is a novel carbon fabric produced by using spread tows instead of yarns as has been conventionally done in textile reinforcements for thousands of years.

Carbon fibre and other composite reinforcements are already being used in the aerospace industry and a wide range of other markets.