Toray Industries, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan; www.toray.com) announced that it has decided to construct a new PPS (polyphenylene sulfide) compound production facility at the Hungarian site of its U.S subsidiary Zoltek Companies, Inc., the world’s largest supplier of large-tow carbon fibers. It is Toray’s first resin compound production facility in Europe and is expected to start operations in March, 2018 with 3,000 metric tons per year (m.t./yr) of production capacity.
PPS resins are high-performance materials used in automotive electrical and powertrain components. Europe, in particular, has strict regulations regarding fuel usage and emissions, as well as vehicle safety, and European automotive suppliers are increasingly using PPS resins in automotive powertrain and sensor applications to reduced part weight and to enable safety improvements. The PPS market in Europe has been rapidly expanding in these growing automotive applications, as well as in growing industrial applications. Toray is the world’s largest integrated PPS supplier, including the manufacture of upstream raw materials and polymer and the sale of resin, fiber and film products. Toray has annual PPS polymer production capacity of 27,600 m.t., including the production facility in Gunsan, Republic of Korea, which started operation in 2016 and the facility in Tokai, Japan.
In 2015, Toray established Toray Resins Europe GmbH (TREU), a marketing and sales company located in Frankfurt, Germany with the purpose of promoting and selling Toray resin products in Europe and establishing local technical and engineering service functions to deepen collaboration with auto parts manufacturers. TREU will promote and sell the PPS resin products manufactured at Zoltek’s Hungarian site in Europe. With the establishment of European PPS compound production at Zoltek’s Hungary site, Toray will have eight PPS compound manufacturing locations in six countries: Japan, China (Shenzhen, Suzhou and Chengdu), the Republic of Korea, Thailand, the United States and Hungary.