MOSCOW (MRC) -- Toray Industries, Inc. has announced that the company and its subsidiary Toray Advanced Materials Korea, Inc. would expand the production facility for high-performance polypropylene (PP) spunbond at P.T. Toray Polytech Jakarta (TPJ) by 18,000 tons per year, as per the company's press release.
After the enhancement, the production capacity of TPJ will be about 37,000 tons per year, boosting the Toray Group-wide PP spunbond production capacity to about 153,000 tons per year.
The added production facility at TPJ is expected to start operating in September 2016.
Demand for disposable baby diapers is forecast to rapidly grow in ASEAN countries with the improvement in the people’s lifestyle, as their national income increases. In addition, demand for disposable diapers for elderly is expected to expand in developed and semi-developed countries in East Asia due to the advent of declining birthrates and aging societies. Under such circumstances, demand for PP spunbond, which is the main material for making disposable diapers, is expected to grow to 660,000 tons per year in 2016 from 493,000 tons in 2013 and to 936,000 tons per year in 2020.
In response to this robust demand, Toray Group has been expanding the production capacities of its PP spunbond production bases in Korea, People’s Republic of China and Indonesia in advance.
In June 2013, TPJ’s first facility started operations, and the Group’s production base in China, Toray Polytech (Nantong) Co. will start operation of a new production line later this month.
Toray Group will enhance its PP spunbond supply structure based on the three bases in Korea, China and Indonesia and build firm relationships with global hygiene product manufacturers in order to drive forward sales expansion in emerging markets such as in rapidly growing China and ASEAN countries as well as in the growth fields.
As MRC wrote before, in summer 2012, Toray Industries in partnership with Gevo Inc. signed an offtake agreement for renewable bio-paraxylene (bioPX) produced at Gevo's planned pilot plant. The agreement will enable Toray to carry out pilot-scale production of fully renewable, bio-based polyethylene terephthalate (fully bioPET), of its fibers and films for the first time in the world.
Toray Industries is a multinational corporation headquartered in Japan that specializes in industrial products centered around technologies in organic synthetic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and biochemistry. Its founding business areas were fibers and textiles, as well as plastics and chemicals. Toray Group Malaysia companies are involved in four main businesses -- polyester fibres, textiles, plastic resins and polyester films.
MRC