Currently nylon 66 polymer, the main ingredient of yarn and fabrics for automotive airbags, is in tight supply globally due to supply deficiency of Adiponitrile, its raw material, and the price of polymer has been soaring. Given such market conditions, ingredient manufacturers are significantly raising their prices one after another.

In the next few years, Adiponitrile is expected to be largely in short supply as the expansion of supply capacity fails to meet the demand, and the price of nylon 66 polymer is likely to continue rising over a long period of time due to the tight supply. Moreover, cost of materials such as coating materials as well as distribution cost and the environment surrounding Toray’s airbag business is increasingly becoming difficult.

Under such circumstances, the company has been driving forward Total Cost Reduction (TC) Project and making self-efforts to thoroughly reduce costs and improve efficiency of all fixed cost and variable cost items. However, these efforts are falling short of absorbing the current rise in raw material prices and significant price increases made by ingredient manufacturers, and the company came to the decision to raise the price in order to ensure supply of products with stable quality and maintain its structure to develop and propose high value added products.