News

Kuraray Co., Ltd. (hereafter "Kuraray" or "the Company") today held a ceremony to commemorate the recent completion of new production facilities for the heat-resistant polyamide resin GENESTAR. Located in Kuraray’s Kashima Plant in Kamisu City, Ibaraki Prefecture, the new facility’s production of 5,500 tons per year will, together with the annual 5,500-ton capacity of Kuraray Saijo in Saijo City, Ehime Prefecture, bring overall GENESTAR production to 11,000 tons annually. Kuraray has also boosted its annual production of nonanediamine, the raw material for GENESTAR, to 7,000 tons with the construction of these facilities.

Developed through proprietary Kuraray technologies and commercialized in 1999, the heat-resistant polyamide resin GENESTAR is a cutting-edge material that realizes lead-free processes in the electric and electronic fields, and has recently made inroads into the auto parts and other new fields. Its adoption has grown steadily in line with heightened worldwide awareness of environmental issues and increasingly stringent environmental regulations. In order to meet this growing demand, Kuraray decided in 2006 that it would upgrade its production facilities for GENESTAR and its main raw material monomer, nonanediamine. Presently, the Company is strengthening its production framework at both its Kashima Plant and Kuraray Saijo. In June 2007, existing GENESTAR facilities at Kuraray Saijo were upgraded to overcome a bottleneck in production, increasing annual capacity from 4,500 tons to 5,500 tons.

In the future, Kuraray will undertake ongoing efforts to strengthen its user-centric development structure. By consistently creating new demand, the Company will lead the heat-resistant resin market and achieve expansion of its GENESTAR business.

(1) Production capacity

Plant Current capacity Expansion (Stage 1)
August 2008 operation
Expansion (Stage 2)
2010 operation
GENESTAR
Resin PA9T
Kashima Plant   5,500 5,500
    1,500
Kuraray Saijo 5,500 5,500 5,500
Total 5,500 11,000 12,500
Monomer
nonanediamine
Kashima Plant 3,000 Pause in Production  
  7,000 7,000
Total 3,000 7,000 7,000

Tons (annual)

(2) Investment amount

Approximately ¥10 billion (monomer ¥8 billion/resin ¥2 billion)