Some of the world’s leading producers of fibers and fiber-related products have large new projects in various stages of development. Here’s a look at two.
Owens Corning, a global producer of glass fiber reinforcements, has opened a new production facility in the Yuhang Economic and Development Zone in Hangzhou, China. The plant significantly expands the company’s capacity in China.
“Building a new facility in China is part of our global business strategy to supply our customers locally in growing regions of the world,” said Owens Corning Chairman and CEO Mike Thaman.
Capacity from the new Yuhang plant, currently in its first phase of operation, will augment output from an existing facility nearby, and will supply rovings (slightly twisted rolls or strands of fibers) to the Asia Pacific market that are currently being imported from Europe and the Americas. The new facility employs approximately 280 people and brings the number of composite production sites in Asia to eight.
The new plant is designed for energy efficiency, combining Owens Corning’s patented Advantex glass formulation together with its advanced glass melting technology. Advantex glass also offers high mechanical properties, high fatigue resistance and strength-to-weight ratio ideal for a wide variety of fiber-reinforced plastic applications such as wind turbine blades, pipe and pressured vessels.
Photo courtesy of the Lenzing Group
In Austria, the Lenzing Group, a specialist in textile fibers, is expanding in its namesake city. The expansion includes the construction of the first industrial-scale production plant for Tencel fibers at the company’s site in Lenzing, Upper Austria. The company is also adding a new production line at its South Pacific Viscose subsidiary in Purwakarta, Indonesia. The projects, along with those already in progress, will boost the Lenzing Group’s annual fiber production capacity by about 25 percent. The total investment is more than US$412 million.
The new investment program also includes the expansion of the Tencel production site in Mobile, Ala. At Lenzing’s site in Nanjing, China, a second production line is currently under construction, which is scheduled to almost double current production capacity to 140,000 metric tons by mid-2011.