Japan’s four major tire manufacturers have now posted their earnings forecasts for calendar 2019, with the general trend of expectations here pointing to increased sales and decreased profits. And amid this, all four of the companies are planning increases to their production capacity. While a number of factors make 2019 a difficult year to predict – including the U.S.–China trade...
Butadiene prices in the Asian market dropped back slightly for 2018 after surging up in 2017. This then formed the topic at a recent executive meeting of the Japan Rubber Manufacturers Association (JRMA), with the association covering a range of information about trends in the market. Looking back, the meeting highlighted that butadiene prices continued to rise – in conjunction...
While snowy conditions around Japan have started later than average this winter, recent developments are hinting at a more favorable tailwind for sales of studless winter tires. Coming into mid-December, northern Japan is finally seeing full-fledged winter conditions, while elsewhere even parts of the Kanto region are beginning to see snowfall. Publishing a demand forecast this summer for the second...
Manufacturers of industrial rubber products have seen their revenues of late driven down by rising distribution and raw material costs. The impact of this has been particularly large for rubber and plastic hoses, which require significant labor to transport due to their shape and so incur higher delivery costs than other rubber products. This has then combined with sharp cost...
Nitta Corp. (TYO:5186) has reported rising sales and profits for the first quarter of fiscal 2018. This puts the company on a solid start to achieving its medium-term management plan goal of generating 100 billion yen ($899.62 million) in sales for fiscal 2020. Sales for the quarter came out to 21.63 billion yen, growing 19.2 percent year-over-year. Operating profit increased...
Japan Rubber Weekly recently conducted a survey on business conditions in the rubber and resin industries, targeting 157 major domestic product manufacturers. With 115 of these companies sending back answers, the response rate was 73.2 percent. The results showed that while business conditions are fair, respondents are concerned by labor shortages, surging logistics costs and trends to raw material prices....
