Shin-Etsu Chemical will invest 100 billion yen ($701.8 million) in its silicone portfolio, one of the mainstays of its Performance Materials segment. In February 2022, the company announced an investment plan worth 80 billion yen to meet strong customer demand for high-performance silicone products. Although the company has completed its investments under this plan, it will continue to invest in...
Lanxess has in July opened the Kawasaki Technical Center at the Kawasaki Science Park in Kanagawa Prefecture. The center has been established to provide high quality technical services to customers in Japan. It is equipped with advanced testing capabilities and can serve a wide range of industries, from personal care products to industrial applications, by offering comprehensive microbiological testing. Lanxess,...
Zeon reported a 5.8% year-on-year decline in net sales to 91.9 billion yen ($648.9 million), a 43.0% drop in operating income to 6.1 billion yen, a 35.8% drop in ordinary income to 8.3 billion yen, and a 33.0% drop in net income to 5.8 billion yen for the first quarter of the year ending March 2024. In the elastomer materials...
Ube will expand its silicon nitride production facility at its Ube Chemical Factory to meet a sharp increase in demand, especially for bearings and substrates for electric vehicles (EV). The company’s silicon nitride is a high-grade powder produced using a proprietary imide thermal decomposition method. It is characterized by uniform grain size and low impurity content, and its fine structure...
Asahi Kasei’s synthetic rubber business fell short of its plan in terms of volume for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. Demand for both solution-polymerized styrene-butadiene rubber (SSBR), mainly for tire applications, and butadiene rubber (BR), mainly for non-tire and resin modification applications, declined in the second half. “All regions performed worse than expected. The rise in raw material...
Aron Kasei has launched Grinable, a new brand of environmentally friendly elastomers, and will begin selling the T-Bi series of biomass elastomers as a new product. The company plans to start shipping products around mid-July. The product uses renewable plant-derived materials and is expected to prevent global warming and reduce dependence on fossil resources. In addition, although biomass materials have...
