Teijin Carbon Europe receives ISCC Plus certification

Teijin Carbon Europe (Wuppertal, Germany) has been awarded ISCC Plus (ISCC-PLUS-Cert-DE100-15897124) certification covering Tenax carbon fiber produced at the company’s Heinsberg-Oberbruch plant in Germany. This accreditation enables the Teijin Group to offer its customers sustainable products that contribute to the circular economy. 

ISCC Plus certification is a voluntary system which administers the circular economy of chemicals, plastics, packaging, textiles and renewable raw materials. Raw materials which are made from sustainable source materials (e.g., via recycling or bio-based sources) are labeled with a sustainability declaration (country of origin of the raw material, quantity and type of sustainable raw material, user ID and so on). This document then follows the product during further processing — even over several stages — until it is used by the end customer. If all partners in the chain are ISCC Plus-certified, the documents can be passed on clearly and reliably.

The Teijin Group is globally establishing a carbon fiber production and supply system based on ISCC Plus certification (read “Teijin’s Tenax carbon fiber, PAN earn ISCC Plus certification”). Its attractiveness is exemplified by the future production of sustainable carbon fibers. Teijin uses various chemical building blocks for the internal production of polyacrylonitrile (PAN). With purchasable and processable conventional and sustainable raw materials on the global market, Teijin intends to purchase materials that are obtained via recycling or directly based on a bio-based source in the future.

These raw materials will then be processed into a sustainable PAN precursor. As the production processes are identical to those used in the conventional production of carbon fibers, the mechanical and chemical properties are identical. Based on the sustainability declaration, a clear mass balance is used to differentiate between sustainable and conventional products.

The Teijin Group obtained ISCC Plus certification for carbon fiber and PAN precursor fiber produced at its Mishima Plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan in June 2023, and began mass production of carbon fiber based on this certification in December of the same year (read “Teijin to produce, sell Tenax carbon fiber from certified, sustainable raw materials”).