Japan’s largest chemical company, Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd., is investing 2.4 billion Yen to expand the silicones production capacity of the Akron plant in Ohio of its group company Shin-Etsu Silicones of America (SESA). The expansion work is expected to be completed in the middle of 2019.
SESA is engaged in the manufacturing and sales of silicones in the US.
SESA’s Akron plant is producing various silicone products that possess diversified forms and applications such as high consistency silicone rubber, liquid silicone rubber for adhesives and sealing materials, silicones for cosmetics and heat-dissipating silicones for applications in automobiles and electronics parts.
This new investment is for the purpose of expanding its production capacity for these silicone products and additionally to set up a new production facility for silicone emulsions.
Since 2014, Shin-Etsu Chemical has been proactively carrying out facility investments in its silicones business by such means as expanding in Thailand the production capacity of its existing silicones plant and obtaining new adjacent industrial land, expanding the production capacity of its plants in Japan and constructing a new research building at its Silicone-Electronics Materials Research Center in Gunma Prefecture, Japan. Including this new investment for expanding production capacity in the US, the total investment amount Shin-Etsu has made in its silicones business over just the past four years now comes to 65 billion Yen.
SESA is the North American base of Shin-Etsu Chemical’s silicones business. In addition to the silicone products being made at its Akron Plant in Ohio, SESA’s Freeport Plant in Texas is producing organo-functional silane.
Furthermore, Shin-Etsu opened a technical centre in the state of New Jersey in 2015, as the company is continuing to focus on the expansion of its silicones business.
With its research, production and sales capabilities coming together as one, Shin-Etsu Chemical has been accomplishing a great deal of fruitful results in Japan and will go ahead with employing the same approach globally.
The new expansion project in the US is part of this plan, and by making the maximum use of Shin-Etsu’s strengths in technology that have been nurtured over a long period of years in the field of silicon chemistry and the development of high-value-added products, Shin-Etsu will continue to strive to steadily capture the robustly growing demand for silicones in the US.