Toray plans $ 100 mn investment to set up nylon fibres plant in Mexico

Japan’s Toray Industries Inc will set up a production facility for nylon fibres used in automobile airbags and airbag materials at its Mexican subsidiary Toray Advanced Textile Mexico (TAMX) with an investment of Yen 10 billion (about $ 100 million). The plant, with production capacity of about 10,000 tonnes, will be located within the Mexican plant premise of Zoltek Companies Inc, a large tow carbon fibre production subsidiary of Toray. TAMX’s production facility is expected to start operation in March 2018.

Mexico has been rapidly growing as an automobile production base by leveraging the wide-ranging free trade network and geographical proximity to the US. Recently, a number of airbag manufactures launch their businesses in Mexico, and the demand for airbag fabrics in the Americas is expected to continue growing significantly primarily in Mexico. 

The establishment of the new production base in Mexico is in response to such growing demand and to strengthen Toray’s local supply capability by building an integrated production system from yarn to fabric in Americas, which is one of the most prominent airbag fabric market in the world, and capture the robust demand for airbag fabric around the world including Asia and Europe.

Currently, Toray supplies nylon fibres produced in Japan and Thailand to its airbag fabric production bases in Japan, Thailand, China and Czech in its integrated production system from yarns to fabric around the world. Toray has been continuously working on the expansion of its production and sales structure such as a launch of airbag fabric production in India in October 2016 etc. Adding Mexico to this structure will further reinforce the global production structure enabling Toray to supply airbag fabric of the same quality from all production sites in a timely manner. 

It will also accelerate Toray’s business expansion by utilising its development capability with the integrated production covering from yarns to fabric, and Toray aims to acquire the largest share in the global airbag fabric market in 2020.  

As part of the basic strategy to continuously expand profits under the current medium-term management program Project AP-G 2016, Toray has been pursuing the Asia, America and Emerging Country Business Expansion (AE-II) project to actively strengthen the organic cooperation among the Toray Group business bases, develop new markets and expand businesses.  Toray positions the automobile airbag business as one of its priority businesses and aims to further expand it globally.