Housing the National Polymer Processing Centre, and Automotive Composites Research Centre (ACRC), the Materials Engineering Centre (MEC) enables application-driven research at 'engineering scale'. The facility provides industrial partners with state-of-the-art, industrial scale composite processing equipment to carry out process development and demonstrations. This equipment is also the subject of further development to enhance the capabilities of the ACRC, particularly automation which is seen as an essential element of any high volume process.

The 1700 tonne Engel V-Duo press facility within the ACRC is ideally suited for the thermoset composites prepreg compression moulding (PCM), sheet moulding compound (SMC) compression moulding and stamp forming of thermoplastic composites.