Automotive Foam Supplier Toray Expands

Toray Plastics (America) opens the PEF Division Innovation Center at its operations in Front Royal, VA. 

The $4 million, 5,000-sq.-ft. (465-sq.-m) Innovation Center houses a state-of-the-art pilot line which enables Toray to explore and qualify new resin systems and technologies, develop new products quickly and commercialize customer-specific solutions, the company says. 

The Innovation Center is a component of Toray’s recent $40 million expansion, which increased the facility’s footprint by 74,000 sq.-ft. (6,875 sq.-m) and includes a new extrusion line, a new irradiation unit and a new salt bath unit. 

The PEF Division manufactures advanced, precision-engineered, irradiation-crosslinked, polypropylene and polyethylene foam for automotive, flooring and industrial applications, including gasket, tape and composites. The ToraSoft brand used for luxury haptics in automotive applications is specified by OEMs, trim-component processors and Tier 1 suppliers and is found in more than 160 automotive models globally, Toray says. 

“Toray is renowned for its high-quality foams and expertise as an innovator, and the new Innovation Center will allow us to do more of what we do best: innovate on behalf of our customers,” says Jack White, director of sales-PEF Division. 

“Having an in-house lab equipped with a proprietary pilot line allows us to leverage our intellectual property freely,” he says. “We can now compound, extrude and coextrude, and laminate foam to custom materials and constructions with even greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness.” 

Toray Plastics (America) is a leading manufacturer of polyester, polypropylene and metallized films, and polypropylene and polyethylene foams. Its parent company Toray Group is a leader in production of synthetic fibers and textiles, carbon fibers, plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and high-performance films.