MGC Advanced Polymers Starts Construction of Nylon-MXD6 Plant in Chesterfield, VA TOKYO, March 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- MGC Advanced Polymers (MAP) has announced construction of its Nylon-MXD6 plant in Chesterfield County, VA. Groundbreaking for the project actually began in November of 2003 on MAP's 15-acre site, and construction is expected to be complete by the end of 2004, with commercial operations beginning in early 2005. MAP is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company (MGC, Tokyo, Japan), with 20% of the shares owned by Marubeni (Tokyo, Japan). James N. Gray Company (Lexington, KY) was the successful building/engineering contractor, managing this initial total capital investment of about $18 million. A state-of-the-art facility, the plant will have a capacity of 22 million pounds per year of Nylon-MXD6, expandable to grow with the market. Operations will begin with about 30 employees. MGC currently has approximately 30 million pounds of Nylon-MXD6 capacity in Japan, with some available reserve global capacity. On the other hand, growth in the U.S. market has been such that domestic support was deemed mandatory. In the U.S., Nylon-MXD6 is used primarily for automotive parts and for food packaging. Particularly in the food packaging area, Nylon-MXD6 has begun to be recognized as a superior, thermally stable gas barrier material, and demand has been continually increasing. MGC owns a broad range of related, intellectual properties, including co-polymers, nanocomposites and additives, and MAP plans to be licensed these technologies from its parent. Both MAP and MGC will be launching new Nylon-MXD6 relatives in the near future, which will offer even higher gas barrier characteristics or enhanced adhesion with other polymers. MAP's new production base in Chesterfield will be a part of overall global marketing efforts for both companies. DATASOURCE: Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., Inc. CONTACT: Sam Suzuki of Mitsubishi Gas Chemical America, Co. (USA), +1-212-752-6620, ; Masataka Tani of Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Europe, GmbH (Germany), +49-211-36-30-80, ; Hiroyuki Otsuka, , or Hisashi Shimazaki, , both of Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Co., Inc. (Japan), +81-3-3283-4812

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