SEOUL, KOREA- "We will try to produce carbon fiber by ourselves as well as the sale of it." Chung Yoosung, president of Samsung Petrochemical, said this on November 1, adding, "Our carbon fiber business will be evolved in three different stages." Earlier in June this year the company had signed an agreement with Germany's SGL Group to move into the carbon fiber composite materials market.
Through a joint venture "Samsung-SGL" to be established by the year's end, Samsung will begin to sell carbon fiber products made by the SGL Group. "In the second stage, we will manufacture intermediate materials such as prepreg and CFRP from the raw material imported from the SGL Group," he said. Prepreg is a composite fiber used to make golf clubs and fishing rods for its excellent elasticity and strength. Carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer, or CFRP, is an extremely strong and light fiber-reinforced polymer which contains carbon fibers used for aircraft fuselage.
"In the final stage, we will reach the step in which we produce carbon fibers ourselves," he said. Currently the mainstay product of Samsung Petrochemical is purified terephthalic acid (PTA), the material used principally as a precursor to the polyester PET for clothing and plastic bottles. Most Korean PTA producers, including Samsung Petrochemical, have suffered mightily after Chinese makers increased their capacity and caused a glut in the market.
