Toray acquires Saati's European prepreg business
With the addition of prepreg operations, Toray has established a foothold throughout the carbon fiber value chain in Europe, including polyacrylonitrile, dry carbon fiber, prepreg and CFRP parts manufacturing.
Toray Industries Inc. (Tokyo, Japan) on Dec. 10 announced that it had reached a basic agreement with Saati SpA (Como, Italy) to acquire its European carbon fiber fabric and prepreg business. Toray will take over the assets of Saati’s plant in Milan, Italy, in January 2015, which will start operation as Composite Materials (Italy) S.r.l., (CIT), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toray. Saati's American composite business will still belong to the Saati Group.
In Europe, Toray currently is engaged in carbon fiber business starting with polyacrylonitrile (PAN) precursor at its French subsidiary, Toray Carbon Fibers Europe S.A. (CFE), and CFRP parts business that uses carbon fiber fabric at its German subsidiaries of Euro Advanced Carbon Fiber Composites GmbH (EACC) and ACE Advanced Composite Engineering GmbH (ACE). Through this planned acquisition of intermediate material business base, Toray establishes its own integrated supply chain and further strengthens the structure of Toray Group’s carbon fiber composite materials business in Europe.
Saati's carbon fiber fabric and prepreg business has been expanding rapidly in recent years as a customer of Toray Group's carbon fiber-related companies, especially of CFE, under cooperation between the two companies. Going forward, Toray Group will transfer its technology to CIT while aiming to expand the business beyond Europe by leveraging its global sales channel. Toray positions its carbon fiber composite materials business as one of titshe Strategically Expanding Businesses and says it plans to drive forward exponential expansion of the business by proactive investment of management resources including M&A under the medium-term management program “Project AP-G 2016” launched in April 2014. The acquisition of CIT is part of this strategy, and Toray says it aims to expand and advance its carbon fiber composite materials business by enhancing its supply chain.
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