Japan’s Idemitsu to set up new SPS plant by 2013

21 April 2008 12:12  [Source: ICIS news]

SHANGHAI (ICIS news)--Japan’s Idemitsu Kosan is looking to set up a new syndiotactic polystyrene (SPS) plant in the next four or five years, to meet growing demand for the engineering plastic resin, a company official said over the weekend.

“We haven’t decided where we will locate the new plant. It could be in Japan or some other Asian country,” said Rei Sato, a sales and marketing manager for SPS business in the company’s engineering plastics department.

The company also planned to expand its existing 5,000 tonnes/year SPS plant at Chiba to 7,000 tonnes/year in the next two years, Sato said. The company has SPS compounding facilities in China, Japan, the UK and the US.

The main driver of SPS demand is the automotive segment, said Sato. “Demand is particularly strong in the hybrid car segment, where the material used for connectors needs to be extremely heat resistant”.

SPS can withstand much higher temperatures than polybutylene terephthalate (PBT), which was earlier the preferred polymer used in such cars. “The use of SPS allows lead-free soldering, which is not possible with PBT, which can only be soldered with lead,” she added. This makes SPS an environmentally superior engineering plastic, she said.

Idemitsu is the world’s only producer of SPS, having synthesized the engineering plastic by using a metallocene catalyst in 1985.

By: Prema Viswanathan
+65 6780 4359

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