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Toray Establishes New Plant in China to Manufacture Artificial Kidneys

03 Feb '12

3 min read

Toray Industries, Inc. and Toray Medical Co., Ltd. announced today that they have decided to build a new plant to manufacture artificial kidneys at Toray Medical (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. (TMQ), which was established in Jimo City, Qingdao, Shandong Province, in July 2011.

TMQ was established by Toray and TMC as joint venture with Qingdao Jifa Group Co., Ltd. (head office: Jimo Qingdao, China; President: Chen Yulan, General Manager: Yang Weidong (General Manager); hereinafter referred to as “Jifa”) for manufacture and sales of dialysis machines. The plant for manufacturing of the dialysis machines is currently under construction and is expected to begin operations in the first half of 2012. The company expects to start selling the products at about the same time.

Toray and TMC are planning to build a plant for manufacturing artificial kidneys at a site adjacent to the dialysis machine plant by investing about 6 billion yen, aiming to start sales in the latter half of 2014. The plant will manufacture TORAYLIGHTTM NV, a polysulphone membrane artificial kidney(generic name: hollow-membrane dialyzer; authorization number: 22200BZX00871000), which was launched in Japan in April 2011. This will double Toray Group's production capacity for TORAYLIGHTTM products. Demand in the global dialysis market is expected to expand led by Asia and other developing nations. In particular, demand is expected to increase significantly in China boosted by factors including state policies on establishment of medical insurance systems. By enhancing this artificial kidney plant, Toray plans to expand its business to meet the growing demand in the future.

More than half of the demand for dialysis machines and artificial kidneys in the Chinese market is currently met through imports. Toray, by building a supply system with these two products, will swiftly respond to this current market requirement. At the same time, Toray expects to contribute to the improvement of dialysis treatment by bringing in the Group's entire dialysis technology to China.

Toray and TMC position TMQ as the beachhead for the pharmaceutical and medical product business in China, and plan to strengthen the customer service in China and expand from the existing dialysis machine and artificial kidney business into other fields. With TMQ, the Toray Group aims to drive its business growth in the life science field, which is one of the Intensively Developing and Expanding Businesses to spearhead the next-generation business expansion under the medium-term management program Project “AP-G 2013”.

Toray Industries, Inc.