#Composites
Toray opens Resins Technical Center in Europe
The main mission is to support customer application development by swiftly providing technical data, assisting with part design optimization through CAE simulation and innovative material and defect analyses and evaluations. With this facility Toray will address the fast-expanding adoption of digital design for resin products by bolstering long-term durability data and highly accurate mechanical property data that materials require. It will increase capabilities for advanced simulation of fiber reinforced parts, notably to factor in their unique anisotropy.
The new Resins Technical Center will offer materials with high tracking performance and heat cycle resistance and provide support analysis on crack prevention. This is to address such issues as cracking from heat cycling during cooling and heating of molded resin products for insulating high-voltage parts with metal inserts. That problem has increased in line with the emergence of electric vehicles.
In the automotive sector, the Technical Center will collaborate with automotive customers together with AMCEU, whose molding, analysis, and assessment capabilities take full advantage of Toray's advanced materials. These include fibers, films, resins, and carbon fiber composites. Toray will thus be able to reinforce technical solutions catering to European needs by offering construction techniques and structural design features matching its materials and engaging in joint development with European automakers and parts manufacturers.
Europe’s automotive sector is accelerating a development resource shift to electric vehicles and automated driving technologies amid increasingly strict environmental regulations, including to cut carbon dioxide emissions through better fuel efficiency. Demand for high-performance resins should thus keep growing amid an expanding market for electric power control and communication-related components. Demand for high-performance resins that match thermal, electrical, and chemical resistance requirements is also expanding in industrial applications, notable for electrical and electronic equipment and housing parts.
The new Resins Technical Center will enable Toray to swiftly identify local needs and formulate solutions to enhance customer satisfaction in Europe and accelerate the global expansion of its plastics business, particularly in automotive applications.
Toray has made expanding in growth fields a key priority in Project AP-G 2022, its medium-term management program. In Europe, which leads the world in initiatives to materialize economic sustainability, Toray will contribute to communities by locally developing and supplying high-performance resins in keeping with its commitment to innovating ideas, technologies, and products that deliver new value.
