Last month saw Bridgestone establish its first in-house venture company, Soft Robotics Ventures, in an effort to speed up advances in the realm of soft robotics. And now, as of Feb. 1, the tire manufacturer has signed a capital partnership agreement with Ascent Robotics, a developer and provider of intelligent robot systems. The agreement will see Bridgestone invest 500 million...
Michelin has partnered with DHL Express to trial the Michelin UPTIS Prototype, a next-gen airless tire. This partnership will mark the first real-world use of the innovative tire, with plans for some 50 DHL vehicles in Singapore to be fitted with UPTIS tires by the end of 2023. Michelin first announced in June 2019 that it was targeting a 2024...
The city of Kawasaki, Kanagawa, has voiced its support for the World Economic Forum’s Transitioning Industrial Clusters Towards Net Zero Initiative, and is set to take part in this initiative via the “Kawasaki Carbon Neutral Industrial Complex.” Kawasaki becomes the first city in Japan to join this global initiative, and will in doing so collaborate with private companies such as...
Demand for rolls for high-performance films has been strong, and along with the recovery of market conditions, it has been steadily increasing recently to become a driving force for rolls as a whole. Driven by the spread of telework and the shift to electric vehicles (EVs), demand for polarizing film for LCDs and separator film for lithium-ion batteries has been...
In December 2022, Japan Rubber Weekly conducted a survey of the rubber and plastic products manufacturing industry regarding business conditions and outlook in fiscal 2023. According to the survey results, business confidence is on a recovery trend and is expected to remain so in the future. Although sales are increasing due to demand recovery, ordinary income is not growing as...
The Japan Rubber Manufacturers Association (JRMA) has released its estimate for new rubber consumption in 2022 and its forecast for 2023. According to the report, in 2022, both Japanese domestic shipments and exports of mainstay automotive tires exceeded the previous year’s levels on a unit basis, but on a rubber volume basis, they were slightly below the previous year’s levels....
