General Electric and Toshiba have announced that its joint-venture will setup a 4th plant in China to produce silicone based products. The facility will produce such things as molds, lubricants, elastomers, and speciality silicone-based fluids. The joint company, called GE Toshiba Silicones will be building the new facility in the city of Nantong, Jaingsu province. In fact, this is GE Toshiba's 4th and largest silicone plant in China.

Costing roughly $78 million USD, the plant is set to be completed and operational by the tail end of 2007 and will be cranking out more than 20,000 metric tons of products per year. GE alone already sells more than $2 billion USD of silicone products per year and says that China is rising rapidly as a major buyer of silicone based products.

GE Toshiba Silicones Co. will be competing with 34 other silicone manufacturers around the world. Most of the competitors are based largely in Brazil, Norway and the US. While the company's production output is large, the total output from all of GE Toshiba Silicones' competitors amount to over 65% of the entire world's silicone products.

This news article was written on January 23, 2006, quoting Xinhua News.