Osaka Titanium Restarts 3,000 tonnes Sponge Expansion

Osaka Titanium Technologies announced on Friday the firm restarts sponge titanium expansion at Amagasaki plant in Hyogo to add annual 3,000 tonnes of capacity after freeze for 2 years. The capacity increases by 8% to 41,000 tonnes by January-March 2012. The firm also increases the polysilicon output capacity at Kishiwada plant in Osaka to increase the total capacity to annual 3,900 tonnes.

The firm restarted the part of expansion program of sponge titanium to increase the annual output capacity to 38,000 tonnes in April-June 2011 by adding 6,000 tonnes capacity at Amagasaki. The additional 3,000 tonnes expansion was frozen in January 2009 at 30% completion rate but now the firm restarts the expansion for 2.3 billion yen.

Kishiwada plant started the polysilicon output with 2,200 tonnes of annual output capacity in January 2011 to start shipment in April. The firm adds 300 tonnes of capacity for 1.3 billion yen to expand the capacity to 2,500 tonnes by March 2011. The firm stopped the polysilicon operation at Amagasaki plant recovers annualized 900 tonnes level of production after the 3 months stoppage in 2010. Amagasaki plant recovers 1,400 tonnes level of production in April 2011. With additional capacity at Kishiwada, the total capacity increases to 3,900 tonnes.

The firm posted 2.546 billion yen of unconsolidated recurring loss for April-December 2010 compared with 1.219 billion yen profit in same period of 2009. The firm revised the profit targetupward to 6.5 billion yen of recurring loss for fiscal 2010 ending March 2011, which is 800 million yen lower loss than former outlook as of October 2010.