Toyoda Gosei Co. Ltd. (TYO:7282) has announced that a large plastic roof panel developed by the company will be adopted by Toyota Motor Corp. (TYO:7203) for use in a fuel cell (FC) bus scheduled for launch this year. Toyota will produce more than 100 of these buses, primarily for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic games. Plastic car bodies, despite...
Zeon Corp. (TYO:4205) President Kimiaki Tanaka recently spoke with Japan Rubber Weekly about how the accelerating trend toward electric vehicles (EVs) will impact his company. Tanaka said that specialty rubber, which is used in parts around automotive engines and is central to the company’s earnings, will be used less and less as the industry continues its march toward EVs. Zeon...
JSR Corp. (TYO:4185) President Mitsunobu Koshiba is hoping to see stable earnings for his company’s elastomer business. But to achieve this, he recently told Japan Rubber Weekly, JSR will need to take its marketing efforts for the sector onto the global stage. Koshiba said that his company’s elastomer business still has its sales largely directed at the Japanese domestic tire...
Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd. (TYO:4063) recently announced that it will raise its polyvinyl chloride (PVC) price by at least 15 yen per kilogram for shipments from Jan. 21 onward. Explaining the decision, a company representative said that crude oil and naphtha prices are expected to continue increasing from autumn onward, and that costs are also rising for utilities, transport and...
Osaka Soda Co. Ltd. (TYO:4046) will raise the price of its Epichlomer line of epichlorohydrin rubber by 35 yen ($0.31) per kilogram for shipments beginning Jan. 10, 2018. The company said that it has tried cost-cutting to deal with rising raw material prices. However, tighter epichlorohydrin supplies relative to demand, coupled with increasing prices for monomers and other primary ingredients,...
Sumitomo Riko Co. Ltd. (TYO:5191) is gearing up to grow its business for general industrial products in non-automotive sectors. These plans include starting overseas production of water-developable flexographic printing plates and increasing the company’s overseas production bases for anti-vibration rubber for use in railcars. Sumitomo Riko will establish a production base for water developable flexographic printing plates in Turin, Italy,...
