Carbon fiber to be next biz battleground for Korea, Japan?

The sports car Lamborghini, Korean Air’s flying hotel A380, and Boeing’s next-generation aircraft 787 have something in common: their body frames are made of fiber.

Not ordinary fiber but carbon fiber that weighs just 25 percent of steel but is 10 times stronger than steel. Carbon fiber is used in a variety of products ranging from high-tech items such as space rocket fairings to fishing rods and tennis rackets. They are necessary materials widely used in almost all industries.

Whether a country possesses carbon fiber technology is considered a measure of its capabilities in science and technology, industry and defense.

The more advanced an industrial structure, the more carbon fiber is used. In Korea, domestic demand for carbon fiber more than tripled from 2,500 tons in 2007 to 8,000 ton last year.

The Korean subsidiary of Japan’s Toray, the world’s No. 1 maker of carbon fiber, will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for its plant in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. Building the plant alone cost 63 billion won (58 million U.S. dollars).

Once the plant begins to churn out carbon fiber from January 2013, it will become Korea’s first mass producer of the high-tech materials.

Toray also has factories in France and the U.S. but the Japanese company plans to steadily expand its Korean facilities to make it the company’s biggest production base.

“Korea is attractive because it has such great infrastructure, good linkage between the forward and backward industries, and proximity to major markets including China,” a Toray source said.

Several Korean companies have recently taken the plunge into the carbon fiber industry. Hyosung said last week that it has become Korea’s first producer of carbon fiber.

Hyosung plans to invest 250 billion won (231.9 million dollars) into building a carbon fiber plant in Jeonju, North Jeolla Province, with an annual production capacity of 2,000 tons.

A company source said Hyosung will invest 1.2 trillion won (1.1 billion dollars) to expand the plant’s annual production capacity to 17,000 tons. Kolon Industries, Taekwang and other Korean companies are actively developing carbon fiber as well.

“It appears that a Korean-Japanese technological war over carbon fiber has broken out given that Toray has started building a plant in Korea and Hyosung has announced a large-scale investment plan in the field,” said Lee Ung-dae, a researcher at the Jeonju Institute of Machinery and Carbon Composites.

“While Toray has more advanced technology, the key lies in how fast Hyosung will catch up.”

sun10@donga.com