JFE Engineering Corp. recently announced that it has been awarded a contract for expansion work at Asahi Kasei Corp.’s (TYO:3407) plant in Singapore, which manufactures solution-polymerized styrene butadiene rubber (S-SBR). After receiving an order from Asahi Kasei, JFE Engineering began construction work to expand the facilities in July, and will complete the work by January 2019. With this expansion, production...
Japan’s domestic sales volumes of glove products remained firm in 2016, up slightly from the year before, according to a report by the Japan Glove Manufacturers Association. Domestic sales of household gloves totaled 91.84 million pairs during 2016, up 0.2 percent from the previous year, while sales for surgical gloves increased 1.5 percent to 79.02 million pairs. Ultra-thin disposable gloves...
The Tokyo Commodity Exchange Inc. (Tocom) announced on Oct. 12 that it plans to list futures contracts for technically specified rubber (TSR), adding to its current listing for ribbed smoked sheets (RSS). Following regulatory approval from the relevant ministries, Tocom aims to complete the listing in the middle of fiscal 2018. TSR production volume has been on an upward trend...
Japanese-based Matsuda Seisakusho Co. Ltd. and German-based Klockner Desma Elastomertechnik GmbH (Desma), both major manufacturers of injection molding machines for rubber, recently announced that they have formed a business alliance. From this spring, the companies will use their alliance to establish a system for joint product development, sales and after-sales services. These services will be offered mainly to Japanese manufacturers...
Nikka Shoko (Japan) Co. Ltd., a trader of industrial rubber and plastic products, and Hotty Polymer Co. Ltd., a manufacturer of rubber and plastic goods for the automotive and construction sectors, recently co-exhibited at Thailand’s T-PLAS 2017 trade fair. The fair, which shows opportunities for the plastics and rubber industries under the country’s Thailand 4.0 economic model, which was held...
Seiji Takahashi, associate professor at Tohoku University’s Graduate School of Engineering, recently received the Japan Bioindustry Association’s 1st Bioindustry Research Award for his joint research with Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. (TYO:5110), which shed light on natural rubber biosynthesis mechanisms and in vitro rubber synthesis. The research revealed that three types of protein play a major role in the biosynthetic mechanism...
