Malaysian PBT plant inaugurated

Toray BASF PBT Resin Sdn. Bhd., a 50-50 joint venture between BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany,) and Toray Industries (Tokyo), has successfully started commercial production on schedule at its newly built world-scale polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) plant at BASF''s site in Kuantan, Malaysia. The PBT plant has an annual capacity of 60,000 tonnes and was built at a cost of $40 million. The PBT base resin will be independently marketed by each company under its own trade names (BASF: Ultradur, Toray: Toraycon).

"In preparation for the new PBT plant start of production, we''ve been expanding sales offices, compound bases, and technical centers in Asia, where demand for PBT resin is increasing further," said Chiaki Tanaka, senior managing director of Toray Industries Inc. Toray group will distribute PBT base resin from the new plant through Toray Plastics (Malaysia) Sdn. Berhad (TPM; Penang, Malaysia) and provide customers with compound resin through its own local compound bases in each area. "The new PBT plant completion leads to further customer satisfaction through both cost and quality competitiveness together with the integrated services provided by our sales, compound, and technical bases spreading throughout the world," said Tanaka.-Stephen Moore; sbmoore@modplas.com