Mitsubishi Rayon Co., Ltd. (MRC), a manufacturer of carbon fibers and intermediate materials, today announces that this June MRC started commercial production of new carbon fiber plant which MRC resumed construction of last August.

MRC has implemented construction of a new carbon fiber plant to meet growing demand from various industrial applications, such as wind blades, pressure vessels, and automobiles. MRC has developed and manufactured new high-performance quality large-tow carbon fiber “P330 series” in our newly built plant and started supply mainly for industrial applications. MRC plans to raise operation rates and targets to full operation in a short period. At the same time, MRC promotes further development of value-added intermediate materials, such as prepreg for wind blades and carbon fiber based textiles for automotive structural parts, fully utilizing high-performance large-tow fibers.

P330 series performs as our standard small-tow (i.e. High strength fiber TR50S/TRH50), however the filament count is larger (50-60k). Comparing with standard small-tow fibers (under 24K), P330 series has better process-ability for large composites and performs like standard small-tow. We believe that these products will push the technical envelope in the carbon fiber market. Our new plant will not only be the first plant to produce high-performance large-tow in earnest over the world, but also it will be the largest carbon fiber plant (2,700t/Y) in capacity in history.

It is estimated total demand for carbon fiber in 2011 is around 30,000 metric tons, and 8,000 metric tones out of 30,000 metric tons are for large-tow. More large-tow fiber has been used for wind blades and structural automotive parts etc., and it is expected that the demand keeps growing. As carbon fiber usage in industrial applications increases, it is expected growth rate of large-tow demand exceeds the one of small-tow.