Carbon fibre progress for Toray in Europe
Fibres group Toray has secured ISCC Plus certification for its Toray Carbon Fibers Europe subsidiary.
This certification allows the European subsidiary to use biomass or recycled materials to produce carbon fibre at its factories in Lacq and Abidos in south-west France, and to use a mass balance approach to track the bio-based materials it uses.
A mass balance approach is one in which raw materials with certain characteristics (in this case being biomass-derived) are mixed with other raw materials (such as petroleum-derived ones). Relevant characteristics can then be assigned to part of a product, in line with the proportion of raw materials with those characteristics that the manufacturer has used.
With the ISCC Plus certification in place, Toray will now be in a position to help users of its carbon fibre achieve better results in the lifecycle assessment exercises they carry out.
ISCC Plus is a voluntary certification programme that aims to offer guarantees that at least some of the raw materials a producer uses have come from biomass or recycled sources.
Toray Carbon Fibers Europe aims to start manufacturing carbon fibre derived from biomass and recycled raw materials before the end of 2023.
