BS, Mechanical Engineering, College of Heidelberg

Stefan Maier earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He started his career in 1980 designing tools for the Automotive Industry at MECO Werkzeugbau and in 1984, joined LIBA Maschinenfabrik GmbH as a Textile Machine Design Engineer. In 1990, he became Technical Director at LIBA. His responsibilities there encompassed Design, R&D, Automation, and new technologies and he successfully transformed the company from an “old style” textile machine manufacturer into an innovative producer of “technical” textile machines. More than 1000 machines were sold to automotive, aerospace, construction, marine, healthcare and other industries. A major focus during this period was to bring the multiaxial and UD fabrics to a Quality Standard for extensive use in the automotive and aerospace industries. He was co-owner of several patents and was part of the first steps to spread out carbon tows to very lightweight carbon fabrics to make composite production cost-effective for the automotive industry.

In 2001 he moved on to Voith Paper in Krefeld as Technical Division Leader for winders and packaging machines with the responsibility of merging Jagenberg Technology, a 2000-employee company, into the Voith Krefeld Division. From 2006 through 2015, Maier was CEO of SAERTEX USA LLC, the world leader in non-crimp fabric production for the entire Composite Industry including fabrics from Glass, Kevlar, Carbon and Hybrids. He collaborated with all industries to utilize lightweight composite parts and optimize existing parts to conserve energy and realize the production of eco-friendly materials. He increased the Revenue of this company by a factor of 10, fully integrated three companies, and established SAERTEX multiCom, a company for glass fiber pipe relining UV Cure Composite production. In 2014 he also began a Green Field Non-Crimp Fabrics Production located in Indaiatuba, Brazil.