Teijin to establish European automotive center

Teijin Limited plans to establish the Teijin Automotive Center Europe GmbH (TACE) in Wuppertal, Germany in February this year as a new base for technical functions within the company’s automotive composite business. The company will handle concept, designing, prototyping, evaluations, marketing, and technical research for next-generation automotive components, utilizing the Teijin Group’s capabilities to provide multi-material solutions for next-generation vehicles.

TACE will enable Teijin to strengthen and advance its solution capabilities by establishing a strong platform for collaboration within the Teijin Group’s European automotive composite bases. It is expected to speed up concept, designing, prototyping and the evaluation of technical proposals developed by each base. Later, TACE will develop marketing and research functions to explore opportunities for new technologies and potential acquisitions, aiming to accelerate joint development with European automakers and respond to demands for greater design freedom, productivity and cost-efficiency as well as weight reduction and strength.

At the same time, the company will pursue opportunities to establish bases for automotive composite technical functions in the USA and China to satisfy demands in these markets to strive to steadily strengthen its position as a global solution provider. Backed by such initiatives, Teijin is targeting automotive composite business sales of approximately €1.7 billion ($2 billion) by 2030.

Amid the ongoing shift toward connected, autonomous, shared, and electric (CASE) automobiles, the automotive industry is urgently transforming its business models to realize more lightweight and multifunctional next-generation vehicles. Teijin acquired Continental Structural Plastics (CSP) in 2017 to become a Tier 1 supplier focused on multi-material automotive composite. In Europe, CSP’s French operation will open a new sheet molding compound plant. Further, Teijin has acquired leading automotive-composite suppliers Inapal Plásticos SA of Portugal and Benet Automotive of the Czech Republic.

To leverage these recent moves, Teijin has now decided to further strengthen its multi-material capabilities in Europe and organically link the development and marketing functions of its European automotive composite bases to satisfy automakers’ demands in the forthcoming CASE era.