Luxi Chemical, a unit of Chinese state-owned Luxi Group, announced Dec. 15 plans to build two more polycarbonate production lines.
The expansion is part of a 200,000-metric-ton project with a total investment of 3.6 billion yuan ($518 million).
The first production line of the project — with an annual capacity of 65,000 metric tons — started trial production in July 2015 and has since stabilized its production.
The company said the two new lines will be equipped with upgraded technology and yield higher quality products. An increased usage of domestic equipment will significantly reduce the amount of required investment and construction time, it added.
China is embracing a new wave of domestic polycarbonate capacity, in a bid to increase its self-sufficiency of the engineering resin. China consumed 1.66 million metric tons of polycarbonate in 2015, but only 27 percent of that was produced domestically. The supply demand gap was filled by a whopping 1.43 million metric tons of imported polycarbonate.