Toray Industries, a multinational chemical company, has reached a basic agreement with Saati, a leader in advanced technical textiles and chemicals, to acquire its European carbon fibre fabric and prepreg business.

Toray will take over the assets of Saati’s plant in Legnano, Milan Province, in January 2015, which will start operation as Composite Materials (Italy) S.r.l., (CIT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toray, while Saati's American composite business will still belong to the Saati Group.

Carbon fibre business

In Europe, Toray is currently engaged in carbon fibre business, starting from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor at its French subsidiary, Toray Carbon Fibres Europe S.A. (CFE), and CFRP parts business that uses carbon fibre fabric at its German subsidiaries of Euro Advanced Carbon Fibre Composites GmbH (EACC) and ACE Advanced Composite Engineering GmbH (ACE).

Through this acquisition of intermediate material business base, Toray is establishing its own integrated supply chain, and aims to further strengthen the structure of Toray Group’s carbon fibre composite materials business in Europe.  

Rapid expansion

Saati's carbon fibre fabric and prepreg business has been expanding rapidly in recent years as a customer of Toray Group's carbon fibre-related companies, especially of CFE, under the strong cooperation between the two companies.

In particular, in the premium automobile field, it has been highly acclaimed by the market for its quick response to customer requirements, despite being a late entrant into the market, the company reports.

Future plans

Going forward, Toray Group will transfer its technology to CIT while aiming to expand the business beyond Europe by leveraging its global sales channel.

Toray positions its Carbon Fibre Composite Materials Business as one of the strategically expanding businesses and plans to drive forward exponential expansion of the business by proactive investment of management resources including M&A under the medium-term management program Project AP-G 2016 launched in April 2014.

The acquisition of CIT is part of this strategy, and Toray aims to expand and advance its Carbon Fibre Composite Materials Business through enhancing its supply chain.

www.toray.com