Carbon Fiber

Toray's history is a story of material substitution: founded in 1926 to make rayon — an early synthetic fiber meant to replace silk — the Japanese company spent the next century repeatedly inventing the next generation of materials. Its most famous achievement: carbon fiber. Toray's carbon fiber, lighter than aluminum and stronger than steel, forms the primary structure of the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, the first airliners built largely from composites. The company's four business pillars are fibers & textiles (including functional fabrics for sportswear), plastics & chemicals (engineering plastics, films for displays and packaging), IT-related products (the films and membranes inside semiconductors), and carbon fiber composites. Toray also leads in reverse osmosis membranes for water desalination — a quiet monopoly in a business that keeps cities alive. With about 46,000 employees and annual revenue near ¥2.5 trillion, Toray supplies carbon fiber to aerospace, automotive, and wind energy, and its T1100-grade fiber sets performance records in the industry. For buyers, Toray's edge is consistency: decades of materials science, from a company that has made replacing traditional materials its entire reason for existing.