Zeon Corp. (TYO:4205) has announced its consolidated net sales declined by 4 percent year-on-year to 295.6 billion yen ($2.8 billion), and its net income decreased by 5 percent to 18 billion yen for the fiscal year ending March 2016. Price drops in export thermoplastic elastomers and rubbers, led by general-purpose rubbers, negatively affected the earnings for the period. Meanwhile, consolidated...
According to a recent study by the Japan Automobile Tyre Manufacturers Association, scrap tires in Japan in 2015 numbered 95 million, a year-on-year decrease of 4 million, and weighed 1 million tons, down 52,000 tons. A look at the breakdown shows that tire replacements accounted for 81 million scrap tires (3-million year-on-year decrease) or 877,000 tons (47,000-ton decrease). These figures...
Continuing on from “Fuel-Efficient Tire Manufacturers in Japan: Report (Part 1),” we are looking at what individual tire manufacturers are doing. Yokohama Rubber – Bringing Added Value With Increased Safety in Driving A bolstered product lineup in Yokohama Rubber Co. Ltd.’s (TYO:5101) fuel-efficient tires, namely with its BluEarth series, brought a more than two-fold increase in 2013 – with 223...
JSR BST Elastomer Co. Ltd. (JBE) plans to begin commercial operations of its phase-two plant in the second half of current fiscal year (April-October 2016). JBE, a joint venture between JSR Corp. (TYO:4185) and Thailand’s Bangkok Synthetics Co. Ltd., manufactures solution styrene butadiene rubber (S-SBR) in Thailand. The new facility is located adjacent to the phase-one plant. Its annual production...
Fujikura Rubber Ltd. (TYO:5121) is expanding the second plant of its Vietnamese subsidiary, Fujikura Composites Haiphong Inc. The company intends to raise the production capacity at the subsidiary in anticipation of further increasing demand for industrial materials with the growth of ASEAN economies. It is envisioned spending $6.4 million on an expansion plan that will allow sales to increase by...
The Japanese tire labeling system for defining fuel-efficient tires began in January 2010 as a voluntary industry standard, covering rolling resistance and wet-grip performance. Thanks to the continuous marketing efforts of tire manufacturers, the penetration rate of fuel-efficient tires in line with the grading system has steadily grown. However, these same manufacturers are finding it increasingly difficult to differentiate their...
