Toray Industries has announced a series of investments totaling about JPY3bn ($32m) to expand the production of food packaging films in Asia through some of its regional supervisory divisions.
The core company of the group's film business Toray Advanced Film (TAF) will install vapor deposition equipment at Fukushima Plant in Japan to produce aluminum-metalized polypropylene (PP) packaging film.
According to the Japanese company, the equipment will be operational in October 2013 and will have a production capacity of 580t per month. Its addition is expected to double the existing packaging aluminum vapor deposition capacity to 1,100t per month.
The polyester staple fiber manufacturing business of Toray Penfibre Sdn Berhad (PFR) in Malaysia will also see the installation of the equipment with technical support from TAF.
Metalized polyester (PET) film production for packaging at the plant will begin in April 2014.
PFR has the film-forming facility of PET film with a capacity of 3,600t per month and will enter the metallization processing of PET film business by investing in the new equipment with a capacity of 375t per month.
The group's business in Thailand Thai Toray Synthetics (TTS) has also completed its capacity increase of cast polypropylene (CPP) film for vapor deposition.
TTS has already been using a vapor deposition facility with a capacity of 400t per month and brought its total CPP film-forming capacity up to 550t per month with the introduction of new equipment in October 2012.
