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Toray acquires Italian firm's carbon fibre fabric business

12 Dec '14

2 min read

Toray Group, Japan’s integrated chemical industry group, has signed an agreement with Saati, an Italian multinational highly advanced textile and chemical group, to acquire its European carbon fibre fabric and prepreg business.

Toray will take over the assets of Saati’s plant at Legnano, Milan province in January 2015, which would start operation as Composite Materials (Italy) S.r.l., (CIT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toray, while Saati’s American composite business will still belong to the Saati Group.

Through the planned acquisition of intermediate material business base, Toray establishes its own integrated supply chain, and would further strengthen the structure of Toray Group’s carbon fibre composite materials business in Europe. Saati’s carbon fibre fabric and prepreg business has been expanding rapidly in recent years as a customer of Toray Group’s carbon fiber-related companies, especially of Carbon Fibre Europe S.A. (CFE), under the strong cooperation between the two companies, Toray said in a statement.

Going forward, Toray Industries will transfer its technology to CIT while aiming to expand the business beyond Europe by leveraging its global sales channel. Toray positions its carbon fiber composite materials business as one of the strategically expanding businesses and plans to drive forward exponential expansion of the business by proactive investment of management resources under the medium-term management program “Project AP-G 2016” launched in April 2014,. The acquisition of CIT is part of this strategy, and Toray aims to expand and advance its Carbon Fibre Composite Materials business through enhancing its supply chain, according to reports.

Currently in Europe, Toray is engaged in carbon fibre business starting from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor at its French subsidiary, Toray carbon fibres Europe (CFE), and carbon fibre reinforced thermoplastic (CFRP) parts business that uses carbon fibre fabric at its German subsidiaries of euro advanced carbon fibre composites GmbH (EACC) and ACE advanced composite engineering GmbH (ACE).

Toray specializes in industrial products centred on technologies inorganic synthetic chemistry, polymer chemistry, and biochemistry.

Saati is active in the market through its three divisions that include printing fabrics and chemicals for screen printing, technical fabrics and components for filtration and separation, and composites & protection systems for composites and systems for light armouring. (GK)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India