A five-member team led by Motoyuki Shima has received the 64th CSJ Award for Technical Development from the Chemical Society of Japan. Shima is General Manager of the Semiconductor Materials Laboratory, one of the Fine Electronic Materials Research Laboratories at JSR Corp. (TYO:4185). The award recognizes the team’s development of a topcoat material for use in argon fluoride (ArF) immersion...
Chinese tire manufacturers, even the ones that make the best product, have experienced flat year-on-year growth for passenger vehicle tires, while year-on-year performance is down 30 percent for truck and bus tires. Even so, local tire makers say this situation is good for their companies. Things are said to be even worse for off-road (OR) tires for construction vehicles. This...
China’s rubber industry is seeking to shift its focus from growing larger to being stronger. The new direction was unveiled at the China Rubber Conference 2016, organized by the China Rubber Industry Association, between March 22 and 25. China is aiming to strengthen its rubber industry due to declining demand, surging labor costs and dim prospects for a rapid recovery...
Zeon Corp. (TYO:4205) has announced that its subsidiary, Zeon Kasei Co. Ltd., will build a new factory in Mexico for the production of PVC/PSC resin compound for powder slush molding. The factory will use vinyl chloride resins as the raw material. The investment amount will be 1.5 billion yen ($13.5 million) and Zeon Kasei aims to begin production of 1,200...
Japan’s import volume of natural rubber for January 2016 increased by 1 percent year-on-year to more than 58,000 tons, rising for the first time in five months, according to the Rubber Trade Association of Japan. However, the import value plunged by 18 percent to 9.26 billion yen ($81.7 million), declining for the fifth month in a row. The average import...
Shipping volume for Japan’s synthetic rubber in 2015 (January–December) dropped by about 5 percent year-on-year to slightly over 1.632 million tons, according to the Japan Rubber Manufacturers Association (JRMA). Domestic shipping volume excluding chloroprene rubber (CR) and butyl rubber (IIR), whose figures weren’t released, fell about 5 percent from the previous year to around 890,000 tons. Export volume also declined...
