Production and shipping volumes of general rubber sheets in Japan are each trending at an annual scale of 20,000 tons. Although market conditions have slumped for the fields of construction and civil engineering, which were major sources of demand for 2015, there still remains a firm undertone in demand with the return of domestic manufacturing. This is owing to a...
The sneaker craze may very well have hit a peak in 2015. New Balance Japan Inc., a key driver of this high demand, saw 2015 (January–December) sales go up almost 30 percent over the previous year, with lifestyle shoes rising more than 40 percent. President Tomoo Tomita called 2015 a year in which his company benefitted from the sneaker craze....
Motoi Oyama, president and CEO of Asics Corp. (TYO:7936), explained the company’s recent performance as follows. Domestic sales fell by 1.5 percent to 101.2 billion yen ($890.8 million) largely due to sluggish performance of apparel. Overseas sales increased by 14.8 percent to 327.3 billion yen, which even after removing currency effects, represented a 10.2 percent increase. The proportion of global...
Sumitomo Riko Co. Ltd. (TYO:5191) has established in Poland a new company, SumiRiko Automotive Hose Poland Sp. z o. o. (SRK-HP), for the manufacturing and distribution of automotive hoses. The new company represents an investment of 10 million euro ($11 million). Located in the city of Sosnowiec, the company will commence operations in October of this year. Sumitomo Riko already...
Nitta Corp. (TYO:5186) has acquired Connect Conveyor Belting Inc., a Canadian fabricator and seller of belts based in Milton, Ontario. Since before the acquisition Connect has been fabricating and selling Nitta’s flat belts, such as the SEB (Super Endless Belt) and the Polybelt, which are used in mail handling equipment, printers, banking terminals and other machinery. Now Connect will become...
Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) has introduced a newly developed pre-forming method that improves productivity of the manufacturing process for seismic isolation rubber. The new method is in use at the company’s Yokohama Plant where it manufactures seismic isolation rubber. In the pre-forming method, the interior rubber is injection-compression molded (ICM) to eliminate the rolling and punching processes. The use of robots...
