Teijin and Jinggong Holding Group will establish a joint venture company named Zhejiang Jiaren New Materials in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, China. In the joint venture, Teijin’s stake will be 49% and Jinggong Holding Group’s stake will be 51%.
This joint venture will enable Teijin to chemically recycle polyester to produce and market resulting fibers, with the objective of forming a closed-loop recycling system in China using its cutting-edge proprietary chemical recycling technology and the capability it has developed through the worldwide expansion of its closed-loop polyester system dubbed ECO CIRCLE.
The joint venture will make an investment of roughly ¥6 billion to build a plant for dimethyl terephthalate production, polymerization and fiber spinning. It will start construction in November 2012, with operations slated to commence in March, 2014. It targets annual sales of ¥10 billion in the first year. This is Tejin’s first polyester chemical recycling operation outside Japan.
The new facility will chemically recycle used polyester products and polyester fiber scraps into dimethyl terephthalate with a comparable quality of material directly derived from petroleum. Polyester resin and value-added polyester fiber will be produced from the resulting dimethyl terephthalate, leveraging Teijin’s polymer and fiber-spinning technologies. The plant’s annual dimethyl terephthalate production capacity in the first phase will be 20,000 t, which will be increased to 70,000 t by adding another 50,000 t in the second phase. The facility will have a recycled polyester fiber production capacity of 19,000 t per year in the initial phase.
This joint venture entity is the initial step in the joint project signed between the China Chemical Fibers Association (CCFA) and Teijin for the pursuance of business opportunities in chemical fiber field and associated industries in China.
Teijin will team up the city of Shaoxing, CCFA and its recycled fiber committee to create a locally centered supply chain and develop effective institutional arrangements for chemical recycling to establish an innovative closed-loop recycling system in China as well as to play a role in environmental preservation and energy conservation. Teijin anticipates the expansion of this closed-loop recycling business all across China.
Source: http://www.teijin.co.jp