Toray Advanced Materials has completed work on its fourth spunbond production line in China late last month. The company held a special ceremony at the Toray Polytech (Nantong) TPN site. The ceremony was attended by company chairman Lee Young-kwan as well as 90 special guests. In his opening remarks, Young-kwan referred to the Chinese site as the core nonwovens plant at the company. The TPN site is now Toray’s largest nonwovens facility, capable of making 77,000 tons of nonwovens per year. Toray also operates nonwovens production facilities in Korea and Indonesia, where it is currently building a second line.

The fourth Chinese nonwovens line was first announced in June 2013. Toray established the Chinese subsidiary in 2006 and added the second and third lines to it in 2010 and 2012.

According to information supplied by Toray, demand for disposable baby diapers is forecast to rapidly grow from 14 billion pieces in 2012 to 38 billion pieces a year in 2020 in China due to the improvement in people’s lifestyle. These improvements will influence major hygiene product manufacturers to expand their existing production facilities and leading medium-sized manufacturers to enter the market. Toray’ has been agressivley investing in China in response to  strong demand for polypropylene spunbond in China as well as the requirements for high-performance materials for disposable diapers and to strengthen the cost competitiveness of its operation.