Toray Industries, Inc. (head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President: Akihiro Nikkaku; hereinafter referred to as “Toray”) today announced that it newly established Toray Resins Europe GmbH (abbr. TREU), a marketing and distribution company for high-performance resin products, in Neu-Isenburg, the Federal Republic of Germany, to expand the resin business in Europe. The new company will introduce CAE analysis and resin evaluation tools for supporting customers’ designing, while implementing product development and providing technical support corresponding to local needs.
Furthermore, in the U.S., Toray enhanced the Resin Technical Center (located in Shelbyville, Indiana, U.S.) within Toray Resin Co. (abbr. TREC), a resin subsidiary, and built a new building (total floor area: 1,200 m2). The center will introduce new facilities including an extruder and scanning electronic microscope, which are for further strengthening local resin compound technology development and technical support function.
With the establishment of a new resin company in Germany and expansion of the resin technical center in the U.S., Toray will deepen collaboration with its customers such as automobile parts manufacturers with R&D functions in Europe and North America (European and North American Tier 1 manufacturers) in addition to Japanese parts manufacturers (Japanese Tier 1 manufacturers) and directly propose even more detailed technical solutions locally.
In addition, mutual collaborations with Toray Group’s 12 resin compounding bases in eight countries – Japan (Nagoya, Chiba), China (Shenzhen, Suzhou, Tianjin, Chengdu), Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Republic of Korea (slated to start operations in 2015), the U.S. and Mexico – will allow them to supply products that cater to the needs of the Japanese, European and North American Tier 1 auto parts manufacturers in a timely manner to the production sites these customers own around the world.
Toray aims to further boost customer satisfaction with the enhancement of the resin business structure in Europe and U.S. and accelerate global expansion of the business primarily in the automobile applications, which are expected to further grow in the future.
As one of the basic strategies of the medium-term management program Project AP-G 2016, Toray is driving forward the Asia, America and Emerging Country Business Expansion (AE-II) Project in pursuit of business expansion of growth countries and regions, and the establishment of the new resin company and expansion of the resin technical center is part of this initiative. Toray will continue to strive to contribute to the development of the countries and regions where significant economic growth is anticipated through business expansion and aim to realize continuous growth and expansion also for the Group.
