Modern manufacturing processes for lightweight parts and products have to face new challenges regarding the changed material properties. For instance, one of the upcoming new lightweight materials, which focusses on a large scale production, is the so called organo-sheet. An Organo-sheet is a continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic which has to be processed above melting temperature. At this temperature, the organo-sheet loses its stiffness and changes into a limp state. In this state, it is possible to form the flat organo-sheet into three dimensional shapes. However, the heat transfer to the environment, such as the air, the forming-tool or the robot gripper, causes a fast cooling. To identify the thermal properties, this paper focuses on the analysis and characterisation of common robot grippers for handling heated organo-sheets in fully automated manufacturing processes. The paper presents the results of handling experiments using conventional suction-, needle- and clampgripper as well as a heated needlegripper. In addition, a heat transfer modelling approach is introduced.