MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ube Industries Ltd. has launched Lotte Ube Synthetic Rubber Sdn. Bhd.- a joint venture of Lotte Chemical Corp. (40%), Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Sdn. Bhd. (10%), Ube Industries, Ltd. (40%), and Mitsubishi Corporation (10%) - for the manufacturing of butadiene rubber (BR) based in the Tanjung Langsat industrial park in Johor, Malaysia, according to GV.
Lotte Ube Synthetic Rubber has a BR production capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year, becoming the fourth BR production facility of the UBE Group. With facilities in Japan (126,000 tonnes), Thailand (72,000 tonnes), China (72,000 tonnes) and now Mayasia, the Ube Industries Group has a combined annual BR production capacity of 320,000 tonnes.
The main applications for BR are for use in tires, high impact polystyrene (HIPS), and shoe soles. Demand for BR is forecasted to grow significantly, centering on the Asian market, which is the biggest market for BR. Lotte Ube Synthetic Rubber plans to monitor trends in demand and eventually increase its production capacity by an additional 22,000 tonnes annually.
Ube Industries will seek to best leverage the capacity from four global plants, to further strengthen its presence in the growing Asian market.
As MRC wrote before, in September 2014, Ube Industries announced that its wholly-owned Ube Fine Chemicals (Asia) Co. subsidiary was building a plant to produce polycarbonate diol (PCD) in Thailand. The new 3,000-t/y PCD facility is scheduled to begin production in Bangkok in October 2015, raising Ube's total PCD capacity to 11,000 t/y. Ube has 2,000 t/y of PCD capacity in Japan and 6,000 t/y in Spain.
MRC