Developer and manufacturer of lightweight aircraft, BlackWing Sweden, has received the highest distinction as winner of the Red Dot Award for Product Design 2016. The fuselage and wings are entirely manufactured using TeXtreme Spread Tow carbon fiber fabric, which the company claims are 15% more rigid than conventional twill fabric.

BlackWing's lightweight aircraft, available now as microlight, are among this year's outstanding products. The jury's awarding BlackWing a Red Dot Best of the Best 2016, a distinction earned by just 1.5% of all entries, further recognizes the company as an international design leader.

The aircraft is designed by founder and CEO Niklas Anderberg. After gaining extensive aerospace engineering experience working for Boeing and Saab Aerospace, Niklas set out to change the rules on how small aircrafts are developed. Lighter and stronger, using the most advanced TeXtreme carbon fiber prepreg fabrics available, BlackWing sets an entirely new standard.

“For us to be able to design the aircraft as we have done and to reach the desired weight targets with the outstandingperformance we needed, using TeXtreme was the obvious choice of materials, if not the only choice,” says Anderberg.

TeXtreme has over ten years of experience manufacturing and testing real-world applications of Spread Tow reinforcement technology. This knowledge, combined with flexible production capabilities and access to the largest global capacity of Spread Tow fabrics, allows the company to provide customers rapid delivery of tailor-made fabrics resulting inreduced time-to-market for their products.

The Red Dot Design Award is an international product and communication design prize awarded by the Design Zentrum Nordrhein Westfalen, in Essen, Germany. The jury awards the highest single distinction “Red Dot: Best of the Best” only for groundbreaking design achievements.

In addition to the use of TeXtreme in light aircraft, this innovative technology is also used in other Aerospace applications, Formula 1, NASCAR and America's Cup racing, as well as in the manufacture of a wide variety of sporting goods products.