Chem-wire Express Japan

03 February 2004 03:16  [Source: CWEJ]

Chem-wire Express Japan - Edition of 2 February

Basic and Fine Chemicals

In April Asahi Glass is to increase its annual supply capacity to 2.5m units for optical filters for PDP (plasma display panels), an increase of 1m units. With production of plasma televisions increasing rapidly, by the end of the year it will bring together a plan for the next phase of expansion to establish a combined capacity of 4m to 5m units, with the expansion to be implemented by 2007. (page 1)

Nippon Soda is to take over the agrochemical operations of Dainippon Ink & Chemicals (DIC). The transfer is to take place on 1 April this year. Nippon Soda hopes to use this acquisition as leverage to grow its agrochemical operations into a Yen50bn ($455m) business as soon as possible. (p. 1)

Japan has been officially chosen as the partner country for Indiachem 2004, India's largest chemical industry exhibition to be held in Mumbai over three days from 3 November 2004. The Indian embassy in Japan has started inviting applications for participation in the exhibition by Japanese companies. (p. 1)

The expectation that a tightened supply and demand balance for petrochemical products worldwide will continue into the long term has become more dominant. With regard to the basic raw material ethylene and ethylene-based products, some are of the opinion that even if plans for expansions and new facilities in the Middle East progress as planned, the tightening of the balance will if anything progress further until around 2007. (p. 2)

Ube Industries previously announced a January to March 2004 price for caprolactam for Asian customers of $1350/tonne, but due to the sudden hike in raw material prices, it has announced a new price for February and March of $1450/tonne. (p. 2)

Mitsui Chemicals has decided to revise its prices from 21 February deliveries for all grades of polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP), and has started providing users with explanations. The extent of the revision will be Yen12 to Yen16 (11-15 cents)/kg for PE and Yen8 to Yen10 for PP (7-9 cents). (p. 2)

Sasol (South Africa) is to expand its business of synthetic higher alcohol for detergents in Japan. Up until now it has been supplying mainly the Japanese market with products from a coal-based plant in South Africa. (p. 3)

Lonza Japan plans to expand operations for performance chemicals, centering on disinfectant and preservative materials. Along with the plan, the company is pushing sales of its guartenary ammonium salt-based disinfectant material and new chlorine-free products to expand its product lineup. (p. 3)

Isamu Paint has begun marketing a new car repair paint-applying system that is less of a burden to the environment and has much higher working efficiency. The system is equipped with a hot air dryer and a dust-free sandpaper for using its water-based car repair paint Aquas. (p. 4)

Demand for special clear coating and other transparent hard coating is increasing rapidly for use on consumer electronic products. The surface of hard-coating applied items such as DVDs is not easily damaged. (p. 4)

SEP Engineering Research (Hiroshima) has developed a special etching system to remove the fine burr and unevenness of machine-processed parts through chemical reactions. It can also finely control the dimension of the products in the micrometer order. (p. 4)

Agro-Kanesho intends to boost “unconsolidated ordinary profits and final profits to Yen1bn ($9m) and Yen600m ($5m), respectively, in a few years” (said company president Hirotaka Kushibiki) by four times compared with what are planned to achieve for 2004. The main contributor should be the soil treatment agent business it purchased in January from BASF (Germany). (p. 5)

Special Issue: Polycarbonate (PC) sheets. The PC sheet market has been expanding steadily for use in car license plates and high-tech products, centering on LCDs. Mirroring the transfer of Japanese manufacturing plants to China, their exports chiefly to China have also been increasing. (p. 6)

Presiding Judge Ryoichi Miura of the Tokyo District Court on 31 January ordered Nichia Chemical Industries to pay Yen20b ($182m) to professor Shuji Nakamura of California University, Santa Barbara, US, who had demanded compensation of the same amount of money as part of the counter value of the patent rights for a blue LED he transferred to the company. (p. 6)

Toyo Engineering recently said it has received an order for the construction of a dimethyl ether (DME) plant from a Chinese state-run corporation. The world’s largest DME plant of 110 000-tonne/year capacity is scheduled to be completed in the first quarter of 2005. (p. 11)

Sumitomo Dow and NEC have jointly developed two new types of flame-retardant polycarbonate resin which are more environmentally friendly and are to be used for making thin housings for mobile equipment, such as notebook personal computers. With the PC resin, a housing as extremely thin as 1.2mm could be made. (p. 12)

Life Sciences and Health Care

EPS (Tokyo) and the Institute for Comprehensive Medical Science (ICMS, Osaka) will conclude 2 February a business tie-up agreement to supplement their operations with each other. The agreement allows EPS to use ICMS’ experiences in, and knowledge of, clinical tests on specially designated health foods, and ICMS, EPS’ experiences in clinical tests on therapeutic products. (p. 1)

Bioventure business Research Institute for the Functional Peptides based in Yamagata (Yamagatu Prefecture) and the National Agriculture and Bio-oriented Research Organization (NARO) have succeeded in jointly developing a medium to efficiently incubate a swine embryo. The embryo incubated in the chemically synthesized medium for a certain period was transferred to a surrogate sow, which then gave birth to a healthy litter. (p.1)

Takeda Chemical will be licensed by Alizyme (UK) an obesity/fatty diabetic treatment, a lipase inhibitor ATL-962 on which the UK firm is conducting clinical trials. The licensing agreement calls for an up-front fee of $3m from Takeda, together with milestone and royalty payments. (p.1)

Hogy Medical will reorganize its sales system so as to deliver in a shorter period sets of medical devices used in surgical operations. The firm will rearrange its sales persons who have been working product-wise so that they will work as members of geographically based teams. Sales branches in Tokyo will also be increased. (p.8)

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