Toray Industries, Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “the Company”) today announced that it has won an order to supply reverse osmosis membrane for a large-scale wastewater recycling plant in Australia.

To be constructed in Brisbane, the country’s third biggest city on the east coast and the capital of Queensland, the Luggage Point Advanced Water Treatment Plant will have the capacity to produce 66,000 cubic meters of water per day and is expected to start operation in latter half of 2008 (Toray is scheduled to supply the membrane in 2008). The plant is being constructed by Luggage Point Alliance, a consortium consisting of entities including the Queensland Government and CH2M Hill (Australia) Ltd., a U.S.-based global company engaged in water and environment-related designing, construction and consulting. The recycled processed water will be returned to dams and reused as drinking water and industrial water.

In recent years, Australia has been suffering from unprecedented droughts and urban areas in particular have been experiencing sever water shortage. This has led both the Australian Government and the state governments to make proactive investment in water resource-related infrastructures and the number of construction plans for seawater desalination and wastewater recycling plants has been surging.
Among wastewater treatment facilities, wastewater recycling plants are considered to be promising, as they require less space compared with other facilities, they can be operated in urban areas where wastewater is generated and the cost of constructing such plants is relatively lower. The Luggage Point Plant, from which the Company received the order to supply membrane, is one of the biggest plants among wastewater recycling plants in Australia and it is part of the Queensland Government’s Western Corridor Recycled Water Project (Australia’s biggest recycled water project aimed at securing water supply sources unaffected by weather). In this field, the Company’s “low-fouling reverse osmosis membrane element” was adopted for its proven track record around the world. It is also the first time for the Company to supply membranes to such a large-scale plant in Australia.

The Company’s “low-fouling reverse osmosis membrane” has been steadily extending its reach in this field, as it has been adopted by facilities including the world’s largest membrane-based urban sewage reuse plant in Sulaibiya, Kuwait (with a capacity of producing 320,000 cubic meters of water per day), the sewage and wastewater recycling plant in Seletar, Singapore (24,000 cubic meters per day) and the wastewater reuse plant at Tianjin Economic and Technology Development Area in Tianjin, China (30,000 cubic meters per day).

The reverse osmosis membrane market is expanding at an annual rate in excess of 8% fueled by the intensifying worldwide water shortage and the need to preserve water resources from an environmental perspective. The market is expected to grow further, primarily in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and North Africa and China. Along with the growth in demand for seawater/brine water desalination plants and for industrial applications such as producing boiler feed water, the market is expanding for new applications such as urban sewage and wastewater recycling, similar to this project, fueling expectations for further growth in the demand for such membranes.
As part of its efforts to respond to these strong demands, the Company invested approximately 7 billion yen to expand its capacity at the reverse osmosis element production facilities at Ehime Plant in Japan and at a plant of Toray Membrane USA Inc. in the U.S. in April 2007. In addition, the new line of membrane production facility at its Ehime Plant began production in November, doubling its capacity.