About
Dirk-Jan Kootstra is the founder and managing director of Quattra-P, the engineering and project management consultancy he established in 1999 to take advanced plastic and composite products from concept through to serial production. His 25-year career spans the full polymer spectrum — RIM, injection moulding and structural composites — working alongside product developers, moulders and multinationals to turn difficult engineering problems into manufacturable ones. It is from that role that Dirk-Jan currently acts as Chief Operating Officer and Head of Manufacturing at Biome Renewables, where he has translated FeatherEdge® — an owl- inspired concept for reducing aerodynamic noise from wind turbines — into a manufacturable, certifiable product backed by an international supply chain. That work has run from design-for-manufacture and tooling through to qualifying moulders, packaging and logistics, drawing on a network built over two decades across Europe and North America. It reflects his conviction that industrialising a new technology is as much a matter of partners and supply chain as it is of engineering. Earlier in his career he ran advanced manufacturing engineering for rotor blades at General Electric, leading technology transfer programmes across Europe and the Americas, and co- founded Pontis Engineering. He holds patents in thermoplastic composite blades, blade joint systems and blade transport.