Teijin-owned Continental Structural Plastics Inc. is constructing a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Seguin, Texas, near San Antonio. The project is a shared capital investment of approximately $70 million with CSP’s parent company, the Japanese materials firm Teijin Ltd.
A groundbreaking ceremony for the facility is scheduled for Oct. 1.
“This investment represents Teijin’s ongoing commitment to growing its automotive composites business unit, with the goal of becoming a global leader in multimaterial vehicle component technologies,” Kim Zitny, CSP’s director of global communications, said in emailed responses to Plastics News.
The new facility is expected to be fully operational by 2021. The plant will do compression molding using CSP’s own sheet molding compound formulations and will be equipped to similarly sized CSP facilities, with capabilities such as trimming and bonding, according to Zitny.
“We are building this plant to meet future production and capacity needs, and maintain our competitive advantage,” she said. “The intention is that it will support automotive and/or heavy truck component production.”
CSP said the Seguin facility will also create about 200 new production, engineering and administrative jobs within two years of the plant opening.
The company will receive $783,750 from a Texas Enterprise Fund grant in exchange for capital investment and workforce commitments. The specific incentive benchmarks are a capital investment of at least $50 million and 200 jobs created, Zitny said.
CSP is based in Auburn Hills, Mich., and employs more than 4,300. The Seguin plant will be its 14th North American manufacturing facility and its 19th globally. For parent company Teijin, it represents the group’s 25th global composite component manufacturing facility.
“We continue to see growth opportunities for our advanced composite and multimaterial components globally, so we’re making sure we have the manufacturing capabilities necessary to meet our customers’ needs,” CSP CEO Steve Rooney said in a statement. “We are truly grateful to the state of Texas, the city of Seguin and Guadalupe County for the support we’ve received in initiating this project, and we look forward to being an active member of the Seguin community.”