Shin-Etsu to enhance its high-performance silicones products and expand its line-up of eco-friendly products

Will make a large-scale investment of ¥100 billion

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Shin-Etsu Chemical (Head Office: Tokyo, Japan; President: Yasuhiko Saitoh) announced it would make a new ¥100 billion investment in its silicones portfolio, one of the core parts of its Functional Materials business segment.

In February 2022, Shin-Etsu announced an investment plan worth ¥80 billion in order to meet the strong demand from customers for our advanced functional silicone products. While the investments under the plan have been almost implemented, the demand for high-performance silicone products has continued to grow since then. Especially, there are high expectations for eco-friendly products that are useful for promoting the goal of carbon neutrality, and the demand for them will continue to grow. In response to the demand from society and our customers, we will expand the applications of our silicones products and work to enhance the advanced functionality of our products line-up and expand our environmentally friendly silicones. These are the purposes of this new investment plan.

Leveraging our strong advanced technologies regarding silicones, Shin-Etsu’s silicones products have been contributing to realizing smaller as well as lighter-weight end products, from aircraft to electric vehicles. In addition, our silicones products are also helping to extend the service lifetime of end products because of their advantage of long-term stability. Furthermore, we are contributing to the reduction of the environmental load by developing products that help achieve resource, energy, and electric power saving. Such products are used in a wide range of fields, including the automotive, semiconductor and communications industries. They are used, for example, in our heat-dissipating sheets, which are essential for the ongoing transition to electric vehicles (EVs), as well as in components incorporated into wind power-generation systems, a renewable energy source whose installations are greatly increasing. Shin-Etsu’s silicones products also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gases, not only in our customers' manufacturing processes but also in the usage stage of the final products. Examples of such products are Shin-Etsu’s high-consistency silicone rubber and our advanced LIMS (Liquid Injection Molding System) materials, both of which do not require post-curing (reheating) after molding, and our silicones used for low-temperature curing release paper.

Under Shin-Etsu’s newly announced silicones investment plan, in addition to implementing investments for our main silicones production hub in Japan, the Gunma Complex in Gunma Prefecture, we will also make new investments in our Naoetsu Plant in Niigata Prefecture, our Takefu Plant in Fukui Prefecture and our Group company plant in Thailand, where silicone monomer and polymer production is carried out. We will also invest further in our existing silicone plants in other Asian countries, the United States and Hungary. At the same time, we will accelerate our efforts to become carbon neutral by proactively moving forward with greener manufacturing processes.

Shin-Etsu Chemical is committed to the realization of the sustainability of society through striving to enhance our capabilities to rapidly develop and stably supply desirable products that meet the demands of society and our customers by taking full advantage of Shin-Etsu’s technological strengths in the silicones business, which our company has cultivated over nearly three-quarters of a century.