Beijing-based Bright East Group Ltd. has started construction of a new plastic optical fiber industrial park in the southwest city of Chongqing with an investment of 2.6 billion yuan (US$381 million).

When finished, the three-year, three-phase project will be equipped with 117 production lines, totaling 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) of telecommunications-grade fiber in annual capacity. The company expects the facility to create 2,000 jobs and turn out 20 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) in annual sales.

Bright East features a diverse business portfolio including real estate, advertising, and construction. The optical fiber plant will be the company's first step into plastics manufacturing.

China's domestic market has great potential for plastic optical fiber, which is more cost-effective than glass optical fiber. Until a few years ago, Chinese firms were only able to make plastic optical fiber for illumination, not data transmission purposes.

An existing market player, Jiangxi Dasheng Plastic Optical fiber Co. Ltd., is also planning to expand its capacity. A company executive told a conference in July that Dasheng aims to achieve daily capacity of 100 kilometers (62.1 miles) PPMA optical fiber and also catch up with Japanese industry leaders in terms of quality. Specifically, the company expects to reduce transmission loss from 184 dB/km to 170 dB/km by the end of this year.