Toray to Acquire Engineering Plastics Compound in the U.S.A.

    TOKYO--Aug. 29, 2001--Toray Industries, Inc. announced today that its U.S. subsidiary, Toray Resin Co.(TREC) will acquire a compounds-production facility of Nippisun Indiana Corp. (NIC), a U.S. subsidiary of Nippon Pigment Co., Ltd., in order to reinforce its engineering plastics business in North America.
    The facility is capable of producing 20,000 tons of compounds per year.
    Through this acquisition, TREC will become an integrated company that will manufacture and market engineering plastics compounds, including nylon and PBT. That will enable it to enhance its marketing efforts to the Big 3 automakers in the United States as well as to its Japanese customers by producing higher-quality products and responding more quickly to their needs. The company has set its annual sales goal for 2006 at 10 billion yen, thus aiming to increase sales within five years to almost three times the current level.
    Up to now, TREC's engineering plastics business has mainly targeted Japanese manufacturers of automobile components by outsourcing its manufacturing of compounds to NIC. In response to increasing demand for engineering plastics following the expansion of the auto-related market in the United States, the company decided that to acquire the facilities of NIC and to manufacture such products on its own would be the best way to strengthen its local products-supply system.
    Automobile manufacturers and electronic-product makers have recently been rapidly globalizing their operations by spreading their business bases all across the world. Under such circumstances, users are demanding that materials makers such as Toray supply materials of equal quality speedily in all parts of the world.
    Therefore, Toray, by establishing polymer- and compounds-production bases all across the world, has built a global products-supply system that will meet the globalized demand of users for resin products. As for its engineering-plastics business, Toray now has a products-supply system that encompasses Japan, Europe, Asia, and the United States. In addition to acquiring the new manufacturing base in the United States, Toray will expand its business even more aggressively around the world.