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S-based Ticona, the engineering polymers business of Celanese, will expand capacity of its Celstran long fibre-reinforced thermoplastic (LFRT) in Nanjing to 10,000 tonnes/year by the end of this year

The manufacturing unit, part of the Celanese Nanjing Integrated Chemical Complex that is the company's largest integrated chemical plant in China, came online in 2008 with an initial nameplate capacity of 5,000 tonnes/year.

The Celstran LFRT facility is part of a multi-year investment by Ticona in China and throughout Asia. It is providing technical and commercial resources and facilities focused on customer application development, along with regional world-scale monomer, polymer and compounding facilities. In addition to the Celstran LFRT facility, Ticona has established GUR ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE) facility and a compounding unit in Asia.

The company has other Celstran LFRT plants in the US and Germany. Celstran LFRT can be tailored to provide application-specific combinations of mechanical properties, impact and creep resistance and low warpage. It is used in a variety of automotive applications, such as instrument panels that require large, strong, lightweight components or assemblies. It is produced by pultrusion technology, a process in which the long fibres are fully impregnated to deliver optimal reinforcement to the base plastic resin matrix, which can include PP, nylon and PU.