Toray Industries, Inc. has purchased approximately 400 acres of land for its future business expansion in Spartanburg County, SC. The Japanese company said it made the investment because it expects the United States to regain its industrial competitiveness on the back of shale gas/oil revolution and the resulting revival in manufacturing.
Toray Group currently operates a wide range of businesses in the U.S. including plastic resins, films, carbon fiber composite materials, water treatment and fibers and textiles, including technical fabrics used by several performance oriented outerwear brands.
"It is going to be the key market for Toray's business expansion, also given the high demands for advanced materials as seen in promotion of developing cutting-edge technologies in the aircraft, energy-related industries," said Toray. "In addition, the U.S.'s importance as an access point to Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil, whose economies are expected to grow in future is increasing.
Toray plans to actively invest its management resources in the acquired land to make it its advanced material business base. In the carbon fiber composite material business, in which demand is expected to grow for high-performance, high-quality carbon fiber TorayCa in aircraft and natural gas pressure vessel applications, Toray has already been considering a plan to newly build an integrated high-performance carbon fiber production facility that covers from raw material fiber (precursor) spinning to carbonization as well as a production facility for TorcayCa prepreg, a TorayCa-based intermediate material which is a carbon fiber sheet impregnated in resin. The company plans to accelerate the expansion of the business in the U.S. by making roughly 100 billion yen worth of investments by 2020.
Under the new medium-term management program "Project AP-G 2016" to be launched in April 2014, Toray Group sets a basic strategy of business expansion in growth fields and growth regions. Particularly in pursuit of business expansion of growth countries and regions, Toray is upgrading its Asia and Emerging Country Business Expansion (AE) Project under "Project AP-G 2013" into the Asia, America and Emerging Country Business Expansion (AE-II) Project by adding Americas to it. By doing so, the group will proactively accelerate its business expansion also in North and Latin Americas without limiting the expansion being implemented in Asia and emerging countries.
The acquisition of the new commercial land announced this time is very much a part of this AE-II Project. Toray Group will continue to aggressively promote enhancement of organic collaborations among its overseas bases as well as the expansion of new markets.
