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 Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower, headquarters of Toray, inChūō, Tokyo | |
Native name | 東レ株式会社 |
|---|---|
Romanized name | Tōre Kabushiki-gaisha |
| Company type | Public (K.K) |
| TYO:3402 TOPIX 100 Component Nikkei 225 Component | |
| Industry | Chemicals Textiles |
| Founded | January 1926; 99 years ago (1926-01) |
| Headquarters | 5F,Nihonbashi Mitsui Tower 2-1-1,Nihonbashi-Muromachi,Chuo-ku,Tokyo 103-8666, Japan |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Sadayuki Sakakibara,chairman Akihiro Nikkaku,president |
| Products |
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| Revenue |  $ 17.86 billion (FY 2014) (¥ 1,837 billion) (FY 2014) |
| $ 579 million (FY 2014) (¥ 59.6 billion) (FY 2014) | |
| Owner | The Master Trust Bank of Japan (7.90%) Japan Trustee Services Bank (6.43%) Nippon Life (4.45%) Mitsui Fudosan (1.19%) Mitsubishi Heavy Industry (0.51%) |
Number of employees | 45,881 (consolidated, as of March 31, 2014) |
| Website | Official website |
| Footnotes / references [1][2][3] | |
Toray Industries, Inc. (東レ株式会社,Tōre Kabushiki-gaisha) is amultinational corporation headquartered in Japan that specializes in industrial products centered on technologies inorganic synthetic chemistry,polymer chemistry, and biochemistry.
Its founding business areas werefibers andtextiles, as well asplastics and chemicals. The company has also diversified into areas such aspharmaceuticals,biotechnology andR&D, medical products,reverse osmosis big membranes,electronics,IT-products, housing and engineering, as well as advancedcomposite materials.
The company is listed on the first section ofTokyo Stock Exchange and is a constituent of theTOPIX 100[4] andNikkei 225[5]stock market indices.
Toray Industries had been originally established as Toyo Rayon in 1926 byMitsui Bussan, one of the two largest Japanese trading companies (sogo shosha) of the time (the other beingMitsubishi Shoji). The fact that Mitsui did not allow the company to be named as a Mitsui company indicates their skepticism of the risk on the business. Risk arose from the fact that, when it was established, the company did not have the right technology to produceRayon. It had approachedCourtaulds and thenDu Pont to buy the technology but, because the price was too high, it decided to buy equipment from a German engineering company and hire about twenty foreign engineers to start the operation.[6]
WhenNylon was invented in 1935 byWallace Carothers ofDuPont, Toray immediately got hold of a sample product through theNew York City branch of Mitsui Bussan, and started research by dissolving this sample insulfuric acid. Because of the patent protection, the company had to make its own effort to synthesize polyamide and make fibre out of it. In 1941, just three years after Du Pont's announcement of nylon, Toray completed the basic research on nylon and started building a small plant to produce Nylon 6. The operation started in 1943 and the product was sold, mainly to make fishing nets.
In 1946, following the end ofWorld War II, Du Pont requested an investigation byGHQ (the General Headquarters of Allied Powers) of Toray's infringement of Du Pont's nylon patents but GHQ found no evidence of infringement, certifying that Toray's nylon technology was its own.[6]
Toray is currently the world's largest producer ofcarbon fiber, and Japan's largest producer of synthetic fiber.[7] Its carbon fiber is extensively used in exterior components of theBoeing 787 airliner.[8]
In September 2013, Toray Industries announced a plan to buyZoltek for half a billion dollars. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Toray and continued operating as a separate business unit.[9][10]
In 2014, as a major aerospace composites supplier, Toray opened apolyacrylonitrile (PAN), the carbon fiber precursor, production line inLacq, south-western France.[11]
In November 2017, Toray admitted to committing 149 quality data falsifications between 2008 and 2016, including on tests run on tire-strengthening cords. As clients to Toray, the companiesBoeing andUniqlo may have been affected.[12][13]
In 2013, Toray acquired an approximately 13% stake in Spectral Diagnostics, a Canadian pharmaceutical company focused onsepsis.[14]
In 2018, Toray announced it would acquire TenCate Advanced Composites to advance carbon fiber production capabilities.[15]
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