Innovation with purpose
Practical engineering that ships: thin, light wight, high-tensile UD-A carbon tapes and production setups built for consistency, traceability, and real-world throughput.
Rinus Prins
CEO & Inventor
Dutch composites pioneer with 50+ years across design, materials, and automated production. From boats and small wind turbines to pultrusion and UD-A tapes, he has consistently turned engineering ideas into dependable industrial processes. Today his focus is unidirectional thermoplastic tapes and the systems that make them: stable process windows, inline QA, and data-first decision-making. By favouring reusable thermoplastics and solvent-free methods, he pursues cleaner manufacturing with consistent throughput and traceability ready for automotive, 3D-printing, drones, profiles, pipes & tanks, and local reinforcement.
Thermoplastic UD tapes
Process robustness
Industrial scale
Focus
Themes
Reusable by design
Thermoplastic matrices and solvent-free processing to make composites cleaner, easier to maintain, and ready for future reusable loops.
Engineering heritage
From boats and wind energy to automated UD tapes decades of building machines and materials that reduce risk between prototype and series production.
Profile
Biography & Principles
Biography
Rinus Prins is a Dutch composites engineer and entrepreneur with more than 50 years of experience across design, materials, and automated manufacturing. He specializes in unidirectional thermoplastic carbon and glass fibre tapes and the systems that produce them reliably at scale.
Earlier in his career he designed lightweight sailboats and rotor blades, then founded Prins Fibre Tech to develop pultrusion equipment and composite profiles. He later led development of patented production machinery and thermoplastic tapes working with partners such as SABIC and helping transition technology into industry.
Today, as a CEO of UD-Automated B.V., Rinus focuses on predictable processing windows, inline measurement, and material-machine co-design bridging the gap between lab ideas and full-series production.
Journey
A journey of innovation from early composites to today’s scalable thermoplastic UD-tape systems.
Design & Wind Energy
Designed and built Wing-series sailboats and patented small wind-turbine blades (WEGO Rotorblades). Early mastery of lightweight structures and fibre-reinforced thermosets composites.
Prins Fibre Tech
Founded Prins Fibre Tech B.V., developing pultrusion machinery and composite profiles. Pioneered use of carbon and glass fibres with epoxy and polyester resins.
CTO at Fibre Reinforced Thermoplastics B.V.
Led machine and product development in collaboration with SABIC. Refined processes and transferred technology to industrial.
CEO & partner at UD-Automated B.V.
CEO & partner at UD-Automated B.V. to industrialize thermoplastic UD tapes through direct-melt impregnation. Established the UD-A brand for reusable, high-performance composites.
Technology Build & Scale-Up
Construction and validation of new patented production system with inline QA, fibre spreading, and direct-melt impregnation. Collaborations across automotive, drones, 3D-printing energy, and aerospace sectors.
