Toray Industries, Inc. announced that it would raise its prices of nylon 66 yarn and fabrics for automotive airbag applications from the December 2018 shipments.
The prices will be raised by 130 yen/kg for both yarn and fabrics (on a yarn weight basis).
Currently, nylon 66 polymer, the main ingredient of yarn and fabrics for automotive airbags, is in tight supply globally due to supply deficiency of Adiponitrile, its raw material, and the prices of polymer have been soaring. Given such market conditions, ingredient manufacturers are significantly raising their prices one after another.
In the next few years, Adiponitrile is expected to be largely in short supply as the expansion of supply capacity fails to meet the demand, and the prices of nylon 66 polymer are likely to continue rising over a long period of time due to the tight supply. Moreover, the cost of materials such as coating materials as well as distribution cost and the environment surrounding Toray’s airbag business is increasingly becoming difficult.
Under such circumstances, the company has been driving forward Total Cost Reduction (TC) Project and making self-efforts to thoroughly reduce costs and improve efficiency of all fixed cost and variable cost items. Nevertheless, these efforts are falling short of absorbing the current rise in raw material prices and significant price increases made by ingredient manufacturers, and the company came to the decision to raise its prices in order to ensure supply of products with stable quality and maintain its structure to develop and propose high value-added products.