The Kansai Rubber Technical Training Course held its 54th annual entrance ceremony on Sept. 2, 2015 at the Chemicals Evaluation and Research Institute, in Osaka, Japan. This year’s class consisted of 43 students, 41 male and two female. This training course was founded 54 years ago in 1962, when the rubber industry in Kansai at the time was experiencing a...
Kuraray Co. Ltd. is proactively expanding toward the usage of its polyamide engineering plastic “Genestar” in automobiles. Genestar is a product developed by Kuraray from a unique monomer and boasts a variety of properties including low water absorption, high heat resistance, high chemical resistance, and high dimensional accuracy. The total production capacity is 9,000 tons in Kashima and 4,000 tons...
Tire manufacturer The Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd., has successfully developed a catalyst that allows the direct synthesis of butadiene from the bio-resource cellulose (a sugar that is a key component in plant fibers), in a joint research project with the Tokyo Institute of Technology. With eyes moving forward on the production of butadiene rubber (BR) — a synthetic rubber that...
According to a report by the Synthetic Rubber Manufacturers Association, the total amount of synthetic rubber produced in Japan during the January―June period 2015 was 819,403 tons, an increase of 0.7 percent over the same period last year. In particular, while SBR and CR showed decreases of 5.6 percent and 5.8 percent respectively from the same period lastyear, BR increased...
Bridgestone Corp. recently announced that its subsidiary in Thailand, Bridgestone NCR Co. Ltd. (BSNCR) has started production of conveyor belts in July, and that the first batch of belts has been sent to Laem Chabang Port in Thailand’s Chonburi Province. Founded in 1996, BSNCR is a production base for anti-vibration rubber, automotive hoses, hydraulic hoses and other products. The plant,...
While announcing second quarter 2015 financial results, The Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd. President Hikomitsu Noji said that sales in overseas tire markets, especially in North America, were sluggish from January to April. This was due to the fact that there were too few tire sets for SUVs, which make up over 50 percent of the market. This will be rectified with...
