While it was only a small workshop in 2012, CES Advanced Composites & Defence Technologies underwent rapid and substantial growth through investments in human resources, facilities, equipment and infrastructure, becoming a factory operating in line with international standards and with a global reach. It is worth noting that the large majority of these investments have been made using the Company’s own resources, or with revenues generated by the Açık Group’s other activities. CES Advanced Composites plans to double the investments that made so far by the end of 2020, through the opening of factories in different locations around the globe.

From its premises established in an area of nearly 20,000m2, CES Advanced Composites provides its business partners with a wide spectrum of services, ranging from conventional methods to highest standard production techniques that require the highest level of aviation certification. Through its recent major investments, CES has now the largest production and R&D capacity in Turkey that enables the company to fulfill its wide production portfolio both in advanced composite and advanced armor fields.

Today company has the necessary infrastructure, capability and capacity to position itself as the leading supplier of advanced composite materials, engineering services and tooling equipment in the local market. Offering globally competitive solutions, particularly in ballistic protection, the company also has ambitious goals for exports. In terms of its goals for 2020, CES Advanced Composites is aiming to export 50% of its products to global customers and to become one of the world’s leading companies in the field of composites. Allocating a significant percentage of its turnover to R&D, the company has been declared as an R&D center by the Turkish Ministry of Economy. 

With its expertise in composite material design, development and production, CES Advanced Composites’ know-how has enabled the development of a leading range of products for a broad spectrum of applications. As well as focusing on the defence and aerospace industry, CES Advanced Composites is continuing its research and development activities to utilize its expertise in land and naval platforms, whilst increasing its capacity in ballistic plates manufacturing.

CES Advanced Composites currently continues its production activities in three different fields, namely; Aviation Composites, Defence Composites and Ballistic Protection. 

In the field of Aviation Composites, company supplies parts to the platform producers such as Airbus, Lockheed Martin (Sikorsky) and Turkish Aerospace (TUSAŞ). Aside from these companies, CES Advanced Composites is also an approved supplier for Leonardo, and have this year entered a qualification process for Boeing. Company executes its works in the field of aviation in accordance with the “build-to-print” approach, which involves the customer sharing production details with the company, after which they carry out the production part through qualified and constantly-inspected processes. Aviation has very tight quality control requirements, which manufacturing company should fully absorbed and fully implement them in all of its manufacturing processes, even those unrelated to aviation. CES Advanced Composites further crown its superiority over its competitors in the market with quality certificates they have received. Six years ago, company was certified to AS9100 standard, the highest indication of quality in aerospace and defence sectors. CES Advanced Composites is in fact one of the few companies in Turkey that they have shortlisted as a possible candidate in the field of composites. In the meantime, company also continuing its efforts to develop its own aviation products, such as parts for aircraft cabin interiors. 

CES Advanced Composites current activities cover all aspects of the defence sector, including those that are not directly related to ballistic protection. Company works with Turkey’s leading land platform manufacturers, such as BMC, FNSS and Otokar. In lieu of metallic parts, CES Advanced Composites design, produce and integrate onto vehicles advanced composite parts that lighten the platform and consequently increase their mobility, while fully meeting the relevant structural and physical requirements. Company carefully selects the optimum materials and manufacturing processes to be used in these works, laying out the most cost-effective and appropriate solutions. In some projects company has already begun working with their customers’ engineers right at the draft design stage in order to add more value. Aside from land vehicles, company is also producing advanced composite parts for various other products manufactured by the sector’s leading players, such as Aselsan, Havelsan, Roketsan and Kale Aero, as well as the various institutions of TÜBİTAK.

Ballistic Protection is definitely CES Advance Composites’ area of expertise. They have a highly competent team, up-to-date technologies that make a difference, and a strong network of raw material suppliers, all of which help them roll out globally competitive solutions. In this field company’s leading position can be clearly understood, not only by looking at the technical features of equivalent products, but also the comments they receive from different users around the world. Their product range in this field contains a diverse portfolio of different products, including ballistic helmets, ballistic plates and vests, spall liners and add-on armor. With its engineering power, CES Advance Composites has become the only local supplier for land vehicle platforms for add-on armor solutions and the largest supplier for spall liners. The main feature of these products is that they are designed to be as light as possible and the lightest composite materials are used in production processes. Using the same quality materials as its international competitors, CES Advance Composites is quite determined to create superior ballistic protection solutions with better craftsmanship and engineering. Today thanks to its wide product portfolio CES Advanced Composites meets various mission-critical demands of different end users in ballistic protection. As one of the three companies manufacturing Ballistic Helmets in Turkey, CES Advanced Composites closely follows the tenders of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF) and the Turkish National Police.

Company also has expertise in the design and application of armor to the mission-critical sections of the naval vessels. In this context, as the first indigenous advanced composite ballistic protection project of the company and has served as the foundation to all future ballistic protection-related works that are on the company agenda today CES Advanced Composites undertook the armoring process of mission-critical sections of the ADA Class corvettes under the MILGEM Project.

Recently tasked with providing spall liners as part of the M60TM FIRAT MBT Modernization Program, CES Advanced Composites also provides ballistic protection solutions for air platforms (aircraft/helicopters). Participating in the armoring of Black Hawk and Mi-17 helicopters in Turkey, CES cooperates with Paramount Group in the international arena for helicopter armoring solutions. CES is currently one of two qualified companies in the world who is already competent to produce armor kits (both cockpit and cabin floor) for Black Hawk helicopters. Today, CES Advanced Composites is the only company in Turkey, which developed modular ballistic floor panels, armored wing panels and pilot seat armor for air platforms.