An agreement was reached in late November 2008 between Toray Industries Inc and China Blue Star & BS group to establish a new joint company for water treatment in Beijing.
The company, Toray Blue Star Membrane Co Ltd (TBMC), will manufacture, sell, import and export water treatment products, particularly reverse-osmosis (RO) membranes.
Facility construction will start in 2009 and be completed by 2010. Business operations will begin in 2009, while the manufacturing facility is being built.
The company will be capitalised at $US 35 million, and the investment for the new facility for manufacturing and assembling RO membranes is to be approximately CNY 500 million (about US$ 73 million).
The factory will produce polyamide composite membranes, as well as auto-winders to assemble the membranes into elements using Toray’s state-of-the-art automated technology.
Toray expects that, after TBMC’s start-up in 2010, the company’s annual overall production of RO elements will see a 1.5-fold increase compared with 2008 and a threefold increase compared with 2006, when combined with production at their facilities in Ehime, Japan and Toray Membrane USA in California.