MOSCOW (MRC) -- Japanese plastic foam manufacturer JSP Corp. is investing USD15.2 million in factories in China and Thailand to make expanded polypropylene, to meet what it said is increased demand for light-weighting of cars and for the appliance and electronics industries, as per Dongguan Informer.
The new investments are the latest in a series of new plants the Tokyo-based company has set up globally. Thus, in the first half of 2014, it announced an USD8.2 million factory outside Detroit for cross-linked expanded PE sheet foam, and the opening of a large EPP plant in Japan, its third in its home country.
The new investment in China, in the city of Wuhan, Hebei Province, will be JSP’s fourth plant in that country when it opens in early 2017. The USD10.1 million factory will have a capacity of 3,000 tons per year of the JSP’s Arpro-brand EPP materials.
"Automakers in China are expected to rapidly lower the weight of vehicles as increasingly strict fuel efficiency requirements are implemented," JSP said. "Furthermore, demand for home appliances is expected to grow along with personal income. Due to this outlook, demand for Arpro is likely to continue increasing in China."
Wuhan is a large car making center in China. The company said the new location will help it reduce shipping costs and meet "strong" economic growth in central and southwestern China.
The company also has facilities in Wuxi, Jiangsu province; Dongguan, Guangdong province and the city of Chongqing. The Wuhan factory will give it capacity of 24,000 tons of EPP in China.
The new Thai facility, in an industrial estate about 18 miles east of Bangkok, will be smaller than the Chinese facility, with a capacity of 1,800 tons of Arpro when it opens in January 2016.
The USD5.1 million investment is designed to serve the global auto industry’s factories in Thailand, as well as the sizable concentration of electronics manufacturers in the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations region.
"Most of the ASEAN production operations of Japanese automakers are located in Thailand," the company said. "In recent years, the ASEAN region is one of the few areas of the world with high prospects for strong economic growth. Economies are growing rapidly in Thailand and Indonesia as well as in many other countries in this region."
We remind that, as MRC wrote before, in 2014, Oriental Energy started a new polypropylene (PP) plant in China. Located in Zhangjiagang, China, the plant will have a production capacity of 400,000 mt/year.
MRC