Kaneka Corporation is expanding production facilities in Belgium to meet demand for polyolefin foam products in the automotive industry. The global market for lightweight materials is growing, with a focus on electric cars. Kaneka plans to increase production capacity and launch high-performance products to meet future demand and expand their business.
Kaneka Corporation has made a strategic decision to expand its production facilities for Eperan® and Eperan-PP®, which are expanded polyolefin particle foam products, at Kaneka Belgium N.V. (Headquarters: Westerlo, Belgium) in response to strong demand in Europe especially for automotive application. The investment of approximately JPY 2 billion will increase the production capacity by about 50 percent, as well as strengthening product competitiveness through process automation and enabling mass-production of high performance products when the operation is started in the spring in 2019.
UK and France have decided to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040 and are actively promoting electric cars. In response, the automobile manufacturers are actively pursuing employment of lightweight materials to extend cruising distance. For being lightweight and excellent in impact resistance, the market of polyolefin foam products for automotive application is expected to continue growing in the future.
The demand in the global market is expected to increase further in the future. The Kaneka group will enhance its production capacity in order, and actively launch high performance products based on the company’s unique technologies in order to accelerate offering of solutions for reduced weight and improved safety of automobiles, and eventually expand our businesses even further.