Global Technologies Racing becomes GTR Composites Group

Global Technologies Racing (GTR) launched a refreshed brand yesterday under the new banner ‘GTR Composites Group‘, with a new logo, identity, group brand structure and creative look and feel.

As well as the branding rollout, GTR Composites Group has launched a new website to begin the next phase of its growth – continuing to bring its high-performance composite engineering expertise to an increasingly diverse range of customers and sectors, delivering across nine facilities in four sites on the South Coast, UK.

What the rebranding says about composite technology needs for different sectors

While GTR has remained firmly established at the forefront of motorsport, the refreshed brand reflects the company’s successful evolution into a specialist composite engineering and manufacturing business, serving customers across defence, aerospace, automotive, marine and other technically demanding markets. The new brand better reflects who they are today who they will become in the future.

Across the Group there are now sub-brands to take account of the sectors in which they operate, such as: GTR Motorsport, GTR Automotive, GTR Defence and Aerospace and GTR Engineering. As a brand icon, the three letters ‘GTR’ are no longer an acronym but they do highlight the heritage of G-Force and Global Technologies Racing.

The new brand and website give a clearer view of the capabilities of GTR Composites Group, showing the experience and the breadth of applications for which its composite technology can be deployed and its ambition to reach those who may not previously have considered a motorsport-derived composite specialist for their own engineering requirements.

Building upon an illustrious heritage in high-performance engineering

The company’s capabilities have been built through more than 30 years of high-performance engineering. The roots stretch back to G-Force, founded by GTR owners John Biddlecombe and Simon Kingdon-Butcher. G-Force designed and built racing cars for IndyCar, Formula Nippon and Le Mans Prototype competition, achieving four Indy 500 victories and building Thrust SSC, the current land speed record holder.

Global Technologies Racing was subsequently established in 2003 on the original G-Force site at Fontwell, focusing initially on composite manufacturing for motorsport. Since then, the business has invested in people, technology, equipment and processes, developing capabilities that have transferred naturally into other safety-critical and high-performance applications. GTR’s motorsport heritage includes over three decades of race-car chassis tub manufacture, with more than 500 chassis produced for 35 teams across five championships. More recently, its expertise has extended into Formula One engine components, aerospace, defence, automotive, medical and marine applications.

How diversification increases pressure on maintaining precision and performance

Simon Kingdon-Butcher, Co-founder, Owner and Director at GTR Composites Group, said: “Whilst our heritage will always be an important part of who we are, this refreshed brand represents where GTR Composites Group is going next. We have spent more than 30 years developing skills and technologies in some of the most demanding engineering environments in the world and we now want to make sure customers across a much wider range of sectors understand what we can bring to their challenges.

“Our customers are looking for more than simply a composite manufacturer. They need engineering expertise, precision, quality, confidentiality and the ability to deliver when the requirements are demanding. Those are exactly the qualities we have built our reputation on and they remain at the heart of GTR Composites Group as we enter the next phase of our growth.”

The company’s growth strategy is now focused on accelerating this diversification while retaining the engineering discipline, quality, precision and performance culture that have underpinned its success in motorsport. Recent investment in production capacity, precision machining, training and development, together with new strategic partnerships, is enabling the company to support customers requiring increasingly complex composite solutions at greater scale.