Denka and SCG Chemicals (SCGC, headquartered in Bangkok, Thailand), a wholly owned subsidiary of Siam Cement, have decided to establish a joint venture company to manufacture and sell acetylene black and to construct an acetylene black production plant in Thailand. The investment amount is $400 million and the plant will be located in Map Ta Phut in Rayong Province. Construction...
Japanese automotive rubber parts suppliers in China continue to struggle. This is due to the decline in sales of electric vehicles (EVs) in China, where Japanese automakers are lagging behind their competitors. Japanese automotive rubber parts suppliers, which entered the Chinese market in the 2000s in response to Japanese automakers, are now facing a turning point. In China, the world’s...
Soft Robot Hand, developed by Bridgestone’s Softrobotics Ventures, has won the Good Design Award 2023 sponsored by the Japan Institute of Design Promotion. Bridgestone is challenging the soft robotics business, which supports safe and secure movement and motion of people and objects with soft robots that can cooperate with humans, by using rubber artificial muscles (rubber actuators) that use the...
Japan’s first public road test of in-transit power supply for EVs has begun at Kashiwanoha Smart City in Kashiwa City, Chiba Prefecture. The technology for supplying power to EVs while driving has been studied since 2018 by a joint research group including the Fujimoto-Shimizu Laboratory of the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences at the University of Tokyo, Bridgestone, NSK, Rohm,...
Production of high-pressure hoses for construction machinery has been strong. Although the overall production volume of high-pressure hoses (new rubber volume) continues to be lower than that of the same month last year, demand for hoses for construction machinery, the main source of demand, remains brisk, backed by the strong North American market. Inventories built up in the market due...
Belt manufacturer Bando Chemical held in September a webinar on how to select materials for transmission belts. Takamitsu Akashi, General Manager of the Industrial Materials Division Sales Department and General Manager of the Power Transmission Sales Group, served as MC and instructor for the day. For rubber toothed belts, the rubber materials used include chloroprene rubber (CR), ethylene propylene rubber...
