Toray celebrates 40th anniversary in Malaysia

On April 10, Toray held a commemorative ceremony and exhibition in Penang. At the ceremony, Sadayuki Sakakibara, Chairman of the Board of Toray, and Toray President Nikkaku welcomed eminent guests including Mr. Lim Guan Eng, the Chief Minister of Penang and Mr. Nakamura, Japan’s Ambassador to Malaysia and spoke about Toray’s future business expansion and the contributions to Malaysia while expressing gratitude for Toray’s business in the country over these 40 years. About 500 people visited this event.

In conjunction with the 40th Anniversary celebration, Toray Group (Malaysia), consisting of Toray Group companies engaged in business in Malaysia, would donate through 4 million ringgit (approx.110 million yen) to Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) based in Penang, Malaysia for establishing a facility. The facility to promote, protect and salvage the local culture, traditions, heritage, environments and other related issues is named the Toray USM Knowledge Transfer center. The construction of the center, to be built on the university’s campus, is expected to be complete by 2015.

USM is one of the top universities in Malaysia turning out excellent human resources in various fields. Through construction of this center, Toray Group (Malaysia) hopes to express its gratitude for the understanding and cooperation till now of the people in the region while contributing to education and human resource development.

In Malaysia, Toray established its fiber production bases one after another in the 1970s and is currently engaged in integrated production starting from fibers to textiles with Penfibre (PFR), which produces polyester staples, and Penfabric (PAB), which spins polyester-cotton (T/C) blended yarns, weaves and dyes textiles and printed fabric. In 1990, it established Toray Plastics (Malaysia) (TPM), which makes ABS resins, started production of polyester film at Penfibre in 1998 and set up Toray Industries (Malaysia) (TML) in 2002 for controlling Toray Group’s operations in Malaysia. In 2004, Toray BASF PBT Resin (TBPR) was established as a joint venture producing PBT resins, further diversifying the business of Toray Group (Malaysia).

At the same time, Toray established the Malaysia Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) in 1993 contributing to the development of scientific technology in the country. Scientific technology is indispensable for the development of a nation and MTSF has been supporting various projects in the natural science fields and recognizing them with awards.

Under the medium-term management program “Project AP-G 2013” launched in 2011, Toray Group aims to become a corporate group that continually expands revenues and profits and is currently driving forward a group-wide project of the Asia and emerging country business expansion (AE) Project, which is aimed at tapping the burgeoning economies of Asian and other emerging countries. Going forward the group will continue to pursue new business opportunities.

In the region, Toray will especially focus on the rapidly growing ASEAN region and Malaysia, and will actively pursue expansion in not only the existing fibers and textiles, resins and films but also pharmaceuticals and medical products and water treatment businesses.

Toray Industries, Inc