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Teijin Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan) has announced that it will acquire Benet Automotive s.r.o. (Benet; Mlada Boleslav, Czech Republic), a Tier 1 automotive composite and component supplier, as part of its strategy to grow its automotive composites business.

Benet offers advanced technologies for carbon fiber-reinforced and glass fiber-reinforced plastic molding, as well as the painting and assembly of vehicles. The company specializes in reinforced reaction injection molding (RRIM) and both conventional autoclave and resin transfer molding (RTM). Benet has three facilities in the Czech Republic and one in Germany to serve European automotive OEMs such as Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Skoda.

Teijin plans to expand its automotive composites business to include proprietary lightweight, high-performance materials and superior design capabilities, with the goal of becoming a multi-material component supply partner of automotive OEM customers served by Teijin hubs in Europe, North America and Asia.

As part of this growth plan, Teijin acquired Inapal Plásticos SA, an automotive composite supplier in Portugal, in August 2018. The company is also installing a glass and carbon fiber sheet molding compound (GF-SMC and CF-SMC) line in the French facility of automotive composites supplier Continental Structural Plastics, which Teijin acquired in January 2017.

According to Teijin, Benet has strategic proximity to the central and eastern regions of the European market where key German and other European OEMs operate production facilities. As part of its multi-material strategy, Teijin will leverage Benet's capabilities in existing development projects and evolve chemistry of innovations with Teijin and CSP's material and molding technologies and technical team members to offer automotive composite solutions that meet customers' future needs for lightness, toughness, design flexibility, productivity and cost-effectiveness. Teijin is targeting automotive composite business sales of approximately $2 billion by 2030.