By Malini Hariharan More companies are reporting damages to facilities after last week’s earthquake and tsunami. Mitsubishi Chemical said in a statement that berths, roads and infrastructure around the plant area at its Kashima site have been damaged and delivery or shipment of cargo “would be next to impossible”. “Restoration of capabilities will take quite […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Japan Disaster – Some petchem plants shut; markets stable
By Malini Hariharan News is slowly trickling in on the status of Japanese petrochemical plants. Only four of the country’s 14 crackers have shut down while a few are running at reduced rates, reports ICIS news. JX Nippon Oil & Energy has shut its 460,000 tonnes/year cracker at Kawasaki while Maruzen Petrochemical has shut its […]
Japan More Competitive Than You Might Think
Tokyo at nightSource of picture: liveworldtours.com By Malini Hariharan it is easy to write off the Japanese petrochemicals industry which has for long struggled to find a solution to the dual pressure of rising global competition and an anaemic home market. Japanese companies, once at the forefront of the Asian industry, have […]
The Dangers of Forgetfulness
By John Richardson “IF YOU want to develop a good memory, you should learn to stop xxxxxxx forgetting, you brain-dead idiot” a former editor of mine often said, in his charming Glaswegian accent, after I had made the same mistake yet again. The same might apply to petrochemicals where maybe, just maybe, shutting down capacity […]
More action needed at Mitsubishi Chem
By Malini Hariharan Japan’s largest chemical company Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings has been actively restructuring this year but more needs to be done to complete its transformation. High on the list is reorganization of its cracker operations at Mizushima. Mitsubishi and Asahi, which also has a cracker at the same site, have been talking since 2007 […]
Caution is the name of the game
By Malini Hariharan (Malini is now joint blogger for Asian Chemical Connections) Japanese chemical majors have raised their sales and profit forecasts for the second half of the fiscal year ending 31 March 2010, but the revisions are marginal and companies are still holding a conservative outlook. Earnings in the first half of this fiscal […]
How To Get Rid Of Management Consultants
Fed up with receiving those obscenely large bills from trendy management consultants populated by wet-behind-the-ears Harvard graduates? Ever thought that a great deal of commonsense is all you need to run a business rather than theoretical nonsense? These guys, as the Financial Times reveals in its article about the Japanese mob, have restructured without the […]
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