Shin-Etsu announces large investment to expand silicone production
Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. will implement close to ¥110 billion in facility investments for its silicones business, one of its main businesses. It will expand its production capacity of silicone monomer, the intermediate product of silicones, and various types of silicone fluids, resins and rubber end products at the company’s main bases in Japan and globally.
A wide variety of requests for silicone products have been received, from many customers around the world, and in order to meet these customer requests, Shin-Etsu is implementing a sequential series of new investments. By means of these investments, the integrated production system will be further strengthened, and at the same time, ability to contribute to issue solutions for customers will be fortified.
These facility investments will be implemented in stages over about a period of two-and-a-half years, and the expansion of the production capacity of both silicone monomer and silicone end products will proceed in parallel. The breakdown of investment amounts is expected to be about ¥50 billion for the expansion of production capacity of intermediate products such as monomers, about ¥50 billion for the expansion of production capacity of end products and about ¥10 billion for the expansion of other secondary facilities such as infrastructure and shipping. The expansion of capacity for silicone monomer will be done at the existing bases in Japan and Thailand, and in addition to Japan, the capacity expansion for the group of end products will be carried out at existing bases in six overseas countries.
In view of the requests coming from customers and the expected demand, the demand for silicone products is expected to increase at a rate surpassing that of the average increase in the world’s GDP. In this way, the company will extensively capture the demand for silicone products for which this kind of steady growth is expected, and at the same time, flexibly meet it. For Shin-Etsu Chemical, silicones have been a strategically important business from the past up to the present and going forward as well, Shin-Etsu will work to further enhance the existence value of silicones. With these investments for strengthening silicones production capacity, The company expects to grow together with customers and will strengthen their position as a leading global silicones manufacturer.
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