Carbon fiber, a material that is one-quarter the weight of iron but 10 times as strong, currently has limited applications in part because of its hefty price tag. Toray Industries hopes to change that by creating various prototypes and proposing new usage.
As a first step, Toray will add new facilities to the Thai plant of Toray Carbon Magic, which was turned into a subsidiary in April 2013. A roughly 22,000-sq.-meter plot adjacent to the Chonburi Province plant will be leased for the expansion.
To make parts, sheets of composite materials, which are produced by mixing carbon fiber with resin, are molded into various shapes through heating. The new building will have a curing oven for composite materials as well as equipment for cutting, coating and other processes. The equipment is slated to go on line in stages starting in the second half of this year.
The total output capacity of the Thai complex will increase up to fivefold. By leveraging the added capacity, Toray aims to triple sales of carbon fiber parts from the current level to between 40 billion yen and 50 billion yen ($388 million and $486 million) in fiscal 2020.
Toray envisions its parts being used in health-related equipment, including wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs, mobile digital devices, train seats and other products. The Thai complex will be capable of churning out mass-produced products by the thousands, such as frame parts for seats in bullet trains.
Toray will also aggressively take on orders to design products and create prototypes. It will expand the main plant of Toray Carbon Magic in Shiga Prefecture for that purpose, handling such complex processes as creating prototypes for motorcycle wheels.
