Japanese films and fibres producer Toyobo (Osaka; www.toyobo-global.com) plans to build an engineering plastics compounding plant at its Americana site in São Paulo / Brazil. The plant is scheduled to have a production capacity of 5,000 t/y of functional polymers, based on polyester, PA and other resins, for the automotive sector. Start-up is scheduled for August 2014 and the cost of the project, which includes a laboratory, is estimated at JPY 1 bn (EUR 7.7m).

The new plant will supply Japanese automobile manufacturers, which are expanding in Brazil to take advantage of the country’s growing automotive market. Last year, Brazil sold 3.8m vehicles, making it the world’s fourth-largest automotive market. “Japanese automobile manufacturers are closely following the expansion of the Brazilian market and are preparing plans for expanding their production capacity in this new market, focusing especially on small cars,” the company stated.

Toyobo’s Americana site is not far from where Japanese manufacturers have established their operations, it added. To meet the growing demand, Toyobo said it plans to expand the capacity of the new Americana plant in stages to 15,000 t/y by 2020. Earlier this year, the company acquired a 15% stake in PET films manufacturer SKC (Jiangsu) High Tech Plastics (Nantong, Jiangsu / China; www.skc.kr).