The Urban Infrastructure and Environmental Products business group (UIEP) of Sekisui Chemical (Tokyo / Japan; www.sekisuichemical.com) says it intends to build a production plant for railway sleepers made from fibre-reinforced foamed urethane (FFU) in the Dutch city of Roermond .

The company said its production capacity for FFU railway sleepers will be virtually doubled, and delivery times in Europe will shrink since the products won’t need to be shipped from Japan. Plant construction is scheduled to begin in 2021, with production due to start in Q1 2023.

The new plant will be built by Sekisui Eslon (Roermond / the Netherlands), an extrusion and injection-moulding company within the UIEP business group. The facility will occupy an area of 4,400 m², and when operating at full capacity should provide 50 new jobs.

FFU railway sleepers have been used in more than 30 countries worldwide. Back in 2008, Sekisui supplied the first such products in polyurethane, which were laid in Germany below railway points in the Leverkusen Chempark. Most FFU railway sleepers from Sekisui are produced in the Shiga-Ritto plant in Japan, but mounting demand in Europe sparked the decision to building the facility in the Netherlands. From there, sales and marketing are to be controlled by the German subsidiary Sekisui Chemical (Düsseldorf; www.sekisui.de). In addition to railway sleepers, the materials are used in numerous other applications, including building products, truck loading areas, ship decks, production equipment and sports facilities.