Acrylic fibre producer Montefibre Carbon (Miranda de Ebro / Spain; www.montefibre.es) plans to build its first carbon fibre production facility on a commercial scale at its site in Miranda de Ebro. Montefibre, which has a total capacity for 75,000 t/y in Miranda de Ebro, intends to convert part of this capacity to enable the production of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor for carbon fibre. The company will invest EUR 16.2m in the project, of which the Spanish government will contribute EUR 11.5m.

Montefibre is currently in the process of adapting four of the spinning lines in Miranda de Ebro to its proprietary technology for the production of PAN precursor, equivalent to a capacity of 17,000 t/y. By 2025, the output should reach 33,000 t, and a subsequent expansion and reconstruction phase by 2027 is also planned. In the medium term, the company aims to achieve a global market share of 15% for PAN fibres. It estimates current worldwide demand for carbon fibre production to be 250,000 t/y and expects this figure to double to 500,000 t by 2027.

The additionally planned carbon fibre line, which will have an initial capacity of 100 t/y, is scheduled to go onstream by the end of 2021. It will form part of a research centre in Miranda de Ebro and produce various large-tow carbon fibre (LTCF) grades for market development. The products are targeted in particular to aircraft and automotive construction. Before the end of 2020, the Spanish company wants to begin marketing newly developed 80K large-tow PAN fibres, initially with two different tensile strengths.

Up until 2015, the present Montefibre Carbon with 112 employees was the main production plant of the former Italian Montefibre group before the group was taken over by investor Praedium. Previous plans with Sabic (Riyadh / Saudi Arabia; www.sabic.com) comprised its own carbon fibre production of the petrochemical giant in Al Jubail, which is in the meantime up and running, and a carbon fibre manufacturing line in Spain – see Plasteurope.com of 22.06.2011.

The new carbon fibre production project will put Montefibre into the league of major producers with European plants, which includes Hexcel (Stamford, Connecticut / USA; www.hexcel.com), SGL Carbon (Wiesbaden / Germany; www.sglgroup.com) and Solvay (Brussels / Belgium; www.solvay.com). The production landscape in Europe is thus expanding from the previous core countries of France, Germany and Hungary to Spain, where Hexcel has, for example, been operating a fibre processing line for CRP prepregs in Parla near Madrid since 2012.