JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #74 - July 2012 - 20

glass fibre

Tab. 2: Global yarn production capacity 2012 Glass type Europe PPG Saint-Gobain Vetrotex JSC «Valmieras stikla skiedra» Others Total Europe North America/Mexico PPG fiber Glass AGY Saint-Gobain Vetrotex Others Total NA China/Asia/RoW (Japan excluded) PFG Fiber Glass Co.,Ltd Taiwan Glass Group NAG / Nittobo Asco Glass Fiber Co.,Ltd Fulltech Fiber Glass Corp. Hong Kong Glass Fiber AGY Shangai Technology Co.,Ltd CPIC Fiberglass Taishan Fiberglass Inc. Others Total Asia Japan Nittobo Nippon Electric Glass Co.,Ltd Others Total Japan Total World 50,000 (5,2%) 965,000 (100%) E/T/NE E 680,500 (70,5%) E E E E E E/L/S2/S3 E E 193,500 (20,0%) E E/L/S2/S3 E 41,000 (4,2%) E E E Eq. Production 68tex (G75) metric tons/year

for infusion applications. It allows better resin flow compared with “standard” 12-micron fibres. Roving is available in the form of direct roving, assembled roving, continuous filament mat and chopped strand. It is used in many processes, including weaving, pultrusion, filament winding and prepregs.

of 3B from the investment fund Platinum Equity. It is interesting to note that Lanxess only produces glass fibre for its own consumption in thermoplastic compounding. Taishan now has the capacity to produce S1 glass thanks to the licence agreement signed with AGY, the owner of this technology. This production should be consumed in China, but also abroad. Owens Corning recently launched a glass fibre grade for food contact (not mentioned in the table). Yarn production Yarn production is estimated at 965,000 metric tons per year. Here again, China/Asia/RoW is by far the biggest production area with 70.5%. This is mainly due to the concentration of electronic device manufacturers in this region. North America and Mexico still hold 20% of this production.

Global glass fibre production capacity
We classified the main roving and yarn producers in two tables (Table 1 and Table 2, respectively), by geographical region of production. Only five of them appear in both tables, which shows a certain degree of specialization in production and applications. Roving production At 4,330,000 metric tons, roving production shows a 5.6% increase over 2011. China/Asia/rest of the world (RoW) represent about 60% of the production (59.8%) with Europe still maintaining its second place (20.7%) and North America/Canada/Brazil/ Mexico following closely behind (19.5%). The pie is growing but the market shares of Europe and America are smaller. An estimated 80-90% of installed capacity was used in 2011, taking the product mix and market needs into account. The Indian company Binani is now associated to 3B Fibreglass, following Binani’s recent purchase

Consumption
The worldwide consumption of glass fibre is estimated at 4.16 million tons (MT) for 2012 with the following distribution by volume: Asia 1.6 MT, North America 1.34 MT, Europe 0.87 MT and only 0.28 MT for the rest of the world (see Figure 1). The distribution per sector (see Figure 1) shows that building and construction is the largest application sector in Asia, at 33.6%,

mainly for printed circuit boards (PCB) or electronics (where the dielectric properties of the glass formulation are extremely important), and for flexible reinforcement of Teflon, PVC, silicon or paper in applications such as shaders. Roving refers to strands

from 300 to 4000+ tex with filaments from 10 to 24+ microns in diameter. The diameter is chosen as a function of production yield versus fibre mechanical and statistical properties, but also depending on the process. For example, a 19-micron diameter is quite common

20 jec composites magazine / No74 July 2012

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #74 - July 2012

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