HANOVER, Germany—Asahi Kasei Rubber Singapore Pte. Ltd. is finishing a major debottlenecking project at its Jurong Island, Singapore, synthetic rubber facility, according to a company spokesman.
The project, intended to increase production capacity by 30 percent to 130,000 metric tons per year, is expected to come on stream "in the next few weeks," the spokesman said March 6 at Tire Tech Expo in Hanover.
Asahi Kasei launched the expansion project in July 2017 in support of its goal to become the "world's No. 1 SSBR supplier" by 2020.
The company has SSBR production plants in Japan—in the Kanagawa and Oita prefectures—as well as Singapore.
The Singapore plant began operation in 2013 and produces the company's latest high-performance grades.