While Japanese domestic automobile production is on a certain recovery track, synthetic rubber sales are struggling. In addition to the economic slowdown in the U.S. and Europe, and demand in China not picking up as much as expected, a major factor is inventory adjustment. According to a synthetic rubber manufacturer, “inventory adjustment will probably take the entire first half of...
Industry
Kato Sansho Acquires Shares in Indian Synthetic Resin Compounding Company
Rubber raw materials trading company Kato Sansho signed on May 22 a third-party capital increase agreement with Indo-Japan Polymers (Chennai, India), a manufacturer of synthetic resin compounds, mainly colour masterbatches, acquiring a 53% stake in the company. Combined with the Kato Office, which has already acquired shares in the company, this means that the company has acquired 84% of the...

Bridgestone Launches Effort to Generate Carbon Black From Used Tires
Bridgestone has installed a demonstration unit at the Bridgestone Innovation Park in Kodaira City, Tokyo, for precision pyrolysis (oilification) of used tires. The move is part of an initiative to generate decomposed oil and recycled carbon black from used tires by thermally decomposing them. The project is one of two R&D themes under the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development...
Denka and Transform Materials to Establish Low-Carbon Acetylene Chain
Denka has decided to conduct joint research with Transform Materials (TM), an American venture company, and to introduce facilities developed by TM for the purpose of establishing technology to realize low-carbon production of acetylene. The companies held a signing ceremony on May 23. Under its eight-year management plan Mission 2030, which started in fiscal 2023, Denka aims to achieve 100%...
Mitsui Chemicals and CrowdChem Use AI to Search for New Materials
Mitsui Chemicals and CrowdChem have jointly developed a technology that can consistently perform everything from the extraction of technological information that will be useful in the future to the search for new materials, utilizing AI technology. This will make it possible to improve the efficiency of new material search using natural language processing. Furthermore, by combining past achievements with generative...
Bridgestone Selected as Digital Transformation Stock 2023 by METI, TSE and IPA
Bridgestone has been selected for the fourth consecutive year as “Digital Transformation Stock (DX Brand)”, an initiative by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA). DX Stocks are companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange that are engaged in Digital Transformation (DX), a process of drastically transforming their...