Composites Meetings Europe · 2027

Agoris analysis · updated October 2026

Key takeaways

• Composites Meetings Europe is an international business convention devoted to composite materials: two days of 40-minute B2B meetings, scheduled in advance between buyers and suppliers, backed by equipped stands and a conference programme.
• Next edition: the 11th, on Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 December 2027, at the Parc des Expositions de Nantes. This is a new venue: since at least 2017, the convention had been held at La Cité des Congrès de Nantes.
• Organiser: the Pôle EMC2, a competitiveness cluster based in Bouguenais, in the Nantes urban area. General organisation is entrusted to abe (advanced business events), a company specialising in business conventions, which the general terms and conditions of sale name as the contractual organiser.
• Biennial frequency, in odd-numbered years. The event has existed since 2007.
• Results of the 2025 edition, held on 5 and 6 November in Nantes: 494 participants, 156 exhibitors, 13 countries represented and 11 exhibitors in the Green Village area.
• Buyers take part free of charge. Suppliers choose a package with a stand: the Standard package (6 m²) costs €4,400 excl. VAT, or €3,960 excl. VAT at the early bird rate until 26 February 2027; specific terms exist for members of the Pôle EMC2 (20% discount), as well as 4 m² packages for micro-enterprises, schools and the Green Composites area.

Who exhibits

Typical profile

Exhibitors are suppliers from across the composites value chain. The classification published by the organiser groups them into five families: raw materials (fibres, nano-reinforcements, resins, matrices, fillers, gelcoats, adhesives), intermediate products (textiles, thermoset or thermoplastic semi-finished products, sandwich structures, CMC, MMC), studies and services (characterisation, calculation, design office, prototyping, R&D, recycling), processing (SMC/BMC compression, draping, winding, pultrusion, injection, RTM, machining) and finally equipment, tooling and consumables (software, moulds, ovens, autoclaves, presses, automation, quality control).

On the other side, the buyers are industrial users of composites, looking for producers, processors, co-contractors or partners. The 2027 registration pack asks exhibitors to specify their fields of application, which include aeronautics, automotive, rail, boat construction and recreational boating, armament and defence, marine energy and other renewable energies, construction, medical, sport, packaging, electricity and electronics, and industrial capital goods. The visual for the 2027 edition highlights aeronautics, sport, energy, shipbuilding, automotive and medical.

Specific terms exist for micro-enterprises, schools and universities, members of the Pôle EMC2 and companies exhibiting in the Green Composites area.

Notable exhibitors

The 2027 exhibitor list has not yet been published. The provisional list of suppliers for the 2025 edition, as at 17 October 2025, gives a sense of the line-up: materials suppliers such as Arkema, Toray Advanced Composites, Chomarat Textiles Industries, Porcher Industries, Diab or Sicomin Composites, the Technocentre of Airbus Atlantic, technical and research centres such as Cetim and IRT Jules Verne, and JEC Group for its magazine. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs was also listed, alongside companies from the Netherlands such as Airborne Composites, Curve Works or Nedcam Solutions.

Quality of the audience

Buyers do not pay to register, but they do not attend as mere visitors: each states their needs on the event platform and chooses the suppliers they want to meet. The organiser does not publish the breakdown between buyers and suppliers among the 494 participants in 2025.

The names shown by the site come from aeronautics, defence, transport and technical consumer goods. Between 2017 and 2019, the site presented the following as buyers at past editions, under their company names of the time: Airbus Defence and Space, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Alstom Transport, Bombardier Transport France, Daher Socata, DCNS, Liebherr Aerospace & Transportation, Nexter Systems, PSA Peugeot Citroën, Renault Sport F1, Thales Systèmes Aéroportés, Stelia Aerospace, Decathlon, Salomon or Swatch. The buyer testimonials displayed today, most often without an indication of edition, come in particular from Safran, Dassault Aviation, Hutchinson and Faurecia.

No third-party audit of attendance is published: the figures are those provided by the organiser.

Programme & community

How the meetings work

The work begins before the event, on an online platform:

• each participant describes their needs or offer there and selects the companies or profiles they wish to meet;
• they accept or decline the requests they receive;
• a few days before the convention, they receive a tailor-made schedule of targeted meetings, spread over the two days;
• on site, the 40-minute meetings follow one another.

The 2027 programme is published: exhibitor reception on Tuesday 30 November from 5pm to 8pm, then, on Wednesday 1 December, participant reception at 8am and meetings from 9am to 12.20pm and from 2pm to 6.30pm, followed by an evening cocktail. On Thursday 2 December, meetings resume at 9am and the convention ends at 5pm. Lunches and the permanent coffee break are included in the packages.

Conference programme

The 2027 programme has not yet been published. In 2025, the conferences, most of them twenty minutes long, took place mainly in the late morning, alongside the meetings. Carbon Waters presented a graphene-based additive intended to improve the curing of epoxies, Nova Carbon the move upmarket of recycled carbon fibre, Boeing the recycling and reuse of composites in the aerospace sector, IRT Jules Verne the contribution of artificial intelligence and the digital twin to predicting the quality of parts produced by liquid composite moulding (LCM) processes, and SolidSail Mast Factory a draping robot developed with Fives. A session from 2pm to 2.40pm, titled "Main challenges of composite materials for defence", brought together the DGA, Safran, MBDA, IRT Saint Exupéry, AD Industries, Specific Polymers and STS Aveyron.

Access to the conferences is included in the exhibitor packages as well as in the buyers' registration. For the 2025 edition, the Pôle EMC2 had issued a call for conference proposals, with talks of around twenty minutes.

On the eve of the 2025 edition, Cetim offered a free round table at its premises in Bouguenais, "High-pressure and cryogenic applications: what new markets for composites?", with Arkema, Naval Group, Raigi, Technip FMC and Toray, followed by a visit to its polymer and composite workshops and laboratories.

Green Composites

The Green Village area brings together companies presenting eco-responsible products, projects or innovations in the composites universe. It had 21 exhibitors in 2023 and 11 in 2025. Exhibitors in this area have a dedicated registration pack, with a 4 m² stand and visibility on a trail called "Parcours Green Composites". Any exhibitor may also offer a product or service free of charge to be presented as part of Green Composites.

Community & networks

The convention draws on the network of the Pôle EMC2, an association under the 1901 law that supports start-ups, SMEs, mid-caps, large groups and academic players in industrial innovation and transformation projects, with a strengthened presence in Pays de la Loire and Brittany. Its members benefit from a reserved rate, 20% below the standard rate.

abe also runs other industry meetings, including Aeromart Toulouse, Citext Europe, Plastics Meetings Mexico or Rail Industry Summit Morocco, as well as R4 Composites, the composites circular economy meeting, in Bordeaux. Techniques de l'Ingénieur is the event's press partner.

Within the industry, JEC World is an annual exhibition-style trade show, expected from 2 to 4 March 2027 at Paris Nord Villepinte. Composites Meetings Europe has a different format: a biennial convention of pre-scheduled 40-minute meetings with buyers who have agreed to meet the supplier.

On site: what you need to know

The 2027 edition takes place at the Parc des Expositions de Nantes, route de Saint-Joseph de Porterie. The organiser justifies this change of venue by the wish to offer participants more space and more comfort. The hall chosen is not specified. For access, parking and on-site services, refer to the venue page: the park is linked to Nantes station in about fifteen minutes by tram line 1 and has 5,000 parking spaces in the immediate vicinity.

On the accommodation side, the organiser has appointed the agency Revolugo as its official and exclusive partner for hotel bookings, and recommends booking early because of the strong demand during the event. Buyers are offered, in their free invitation, a hotel room with breakfast, subject to availability.

Participation requires prior registration, as an exhibitor or as a buyer. As early as 2017, the site announced "2 days reserved for pre-registered professionals".

How much it costs to exhibit

The organiser publishes its 2027 price list. The main packages, at the standard rate then at the early bird rate valid until 26 February 2027:

• Standard package, equipped 6 m² stand and access for one person: €4,400 excl. VAT, or €3,960 excl. VAT at the early bird rate.
• Plus package, equipped 9 m² stand and access for two people: €6,600 excl. VAT, or €5,940 excl. VAT at the early bird rate.
• Pôle EMC2 members: €3,520 excl. VAT for the Standard package (€3,168 excl. VAT at the early bird rate) and €5,280 excl. VAT for the Plus package (€4,752 excl. VAT at the early bird rate).
• Micro-enterprises, and schools and universities: 4 m² stand at €2,750 excl. VAT, with access for one person for micro-enterprises and two for schools.
• Green Composites area: 4 m² stand at €3,500 excl. VAT, or €3,150 excl. VAT at the early bird rate.

Each package includes an equipped stand (table, chairs, sign, electrical connection, spotlight rail, carpet), a personalised meeting schedule, a page in the event catalogue, lunches on both days, the cocktail on 1 December, the permanent coffee break, access to the conferences and stand cleaning. Options: €380 excl. VAT per additional participant, without an additional schedule; €450 excl. VAT for a second catalogue entry; €500 excl. VAT for a second schedule of 5 to 10 meetings and €1,000 excl. VAT beyond 10, provided the first is full.

A 60% deposit is required at registration, with the balance due before the event. The general terms provide for cancellation without penalty up to 60 days before the event, less 7.5% administrative fees, 30% of the amount due between 59 and 41 days, and the full amount at 40 days or fewer.

Preparing your visit

For the exhibitor

• Register before 26 February 2027 to benefit from the early bird rate, i.e. 10% less on the Standard and Plus packages.
• Take care over your presentation profile: it is carried into the members' area consulted by buyers, and the organiser stresses its accuracy for targeting meetings.
• Size the team to fit the package: the Plus package gives two accesses but only one schedule; a second schedule is chargeable and assumes the first is full.
• Check your eligibility for the EMC2, micro-enterprise, school or Green Composites rates before choosing your pack.
• Plan to arrive the day before: exhibitor reception takes place on Tuesday 30 November from 5pm to 8pm.

For the buyer

• Arrive with precise needs: the schedule is built from the choices expressed on the platform.
• Browse the provisional 2025 supplier list, the most recent one published, to get an idea of the line-up.
• Take advantage of the free invitation, which includes the meetings, the conferences, the technical catalogue, meals and, subject to availability, the hotel.

Policy & CSR initiatives

At the event level, the Composites Meetings Europe website publishes no CSR policy, no carbon footprint assessment and no ISO 20121 certification. The Green Composites area and the 2025 conferences devoted to recycled carbon fibre and the circularity of composites address the environmental transition of the industry: that is content, to be distinguished from a commitment on the footprint of the event itself.

At the organisers' level, abe publishes a CSR actions page that is declarative in nature: waste sorting at its business conventions, train travel preferred, caterers chosen through a local approach and local suppliers for audiovisual, furniture, security and cleaning, local printing, eco-design and digital signage. No certification or quantified measurement is attached to it. The Pôle EMC2 launched in 2020 a Manifesto for an eco-responsible industry, which relates to its positioning with manufacturers rather than to the organisation of the convention.

At the venue level, the commitment is the strongest: the Parc des Expositions de Nantes has been ISO 20121 certified, the standard for responsible management of events, since 2016, with renewals in 2023 and 2025, on a scope that includes hosting professional events. The park states that in 2010 it was the first ISO 14001 certified park in Europe.

How the convention has evolved

Trajectory analysis

The series cannot be compared term by term. Until 2021, the organiser counted companies present and meetings organised: more than 420 companies and 5,200 meetings in 2015 (21 countries, Japan as guest country), 412 companies and 4,100 meetings in 2017 (21 countries, the United States as guest country), then, according to the website's 2021 key figures, 393 companies, 4,800 meetings and 20 countries. Since 2023, the website has published participants and exhibitors; for 2019 and 2021, only the Pôle EMC2 reports give a number of people present, more than 500 each time. On that basis, the 2025 edition is stable on the supply side, with 156 exhibitors against 153, and slightly down on participants according to the website's key figures, 494 against 513. The decline is sharper on international reach, from 19 to 13 countries, and on the Green Village, from 21 to 11 exhibitors.

The 2027 edition breaks with a long-standing habit. Since at least 2017, the convention had been held at La Cité, the Nantes congress centre, called La Cité Nantes Events Center on the site until 2021 and then Cité des Congrès de Nantes; in 2021, the exhibition space occupied its Grande Halle. It moves to the Parc des Expositions and shifts from November to early December. The organiser speaks of a new, larger setting. La Cité des Congrès de Nantes is also undertaking a renovation from 2026 to 2028, which affects in particular the Grande Halle and the Grand Auditorium, and it has formed a single entity with the Parc des Expositions since 1 January 2026.

The other shift concerns the name. The site spoke of Composites Meetings until 2023; it presents the 2025 edition as the Composites Meetings Europe convention, and the English page for 2027 highlights Nantes's place in one of the main European hubs for aeronautics and composites. For a supplier, two points are worth watching in 2027: the presence of buyers in a new venue for the convention, and the international presence, down from 19 countries in 2023 to 13 in 2025.

All data not attributed to a source comes from the organiser's website.

Unless otherwise stated, all factual data in this listing comes from the organiser's official website (france.compositesmeetings.com).