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Toray to hike large tow carbon fibre capacity at US plant

08 May '15

3 min read

Toray Industries said it has decided to expand production for large tow carbon fibres at its US subsidiary, Zoltek Companies, Inc.

“Toray will double the large tow carbon fibre capacity of Zoltek to 5,000 tons per year, starting in April 2016,” a press release from Toray informed.

Zoltek is currently producing large tow carbon fibres at its plants in Hungary and Mexico.

Toray is adding capacity in anticipation of higher demand from the automobile industry, in addition to rapidly growing demand for the product in wind power generation application in recent years.

It also expects that the industry is expected to have a shortage of production capacity of these particular carbon fibres in early 2016.

The production capacity enhancement is to respond to the current shortage in production capacity and Toray will pursue establishment of a more stable supply structure of large tow carbon fibres.

In response to the robust demand for large tow carbon fibres, Zoltek plans to hike its production capacity of the material by 100 per cent by 2020 from the current 13,000 tons per year.

Zoltek entered into large tow carbon fibre business in 1988, and acquired textile acrylic fibre plants in Hungary in 1996 and US in 2007, respectively.

Ever since, it has been expanding the business by promoting development of large tow carbon fibre application and demand and also pursuing cost competitiveness.

It became a member of the Toray Group in February 2014 and has been accelerating its business expansion as the world’s No. 1 company in the large low carbon fibre field.

Toray added that it will focus on expanding sales of regular low and large tow carbon fibres in respective fields where the materials can demonstrate their strengths.

It will also pursue synergies of the two fields by leveraging the strong points of the respective fields with the aim of further growing the business.

Large tow carbon fibres are those with 40,000 or more number of filaments, produced on modified acrylic staple fiber production line for textile.

A relatively cheaper material, it is used in applications such as wind turbine blades and reinforced plastics compounds.

Regular tow carbon fibres are those with 24,000 or less number of filaments, produced on specially designed equipment.

They are used for high-end applications such as aircraft which require high performance and quality. (AR)

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India