The hottest epoxy resin industry in Japan is in th

Japan's epoxy resin industry is in the process of integration

Japan's epoxy resin consumption has started to grow slowly since it fell in 2001, reaching 140000 tons in 2003, slightly higher than the level in 2002. Under the condition of the market downturn, the entire Japanese epoxy resin has entered the integration period. With the rapid development of IT industry, the output of Japanese epoxy resin industry reached a record 240000 tons in 2000. However, the IT industry Foam Burst in 2001, and the output fell to 190000 tons, the first time since 1997 that it fell below 200000 tons. At the same time, in terms of production capacity, the overall production capacity of nine Japanese production plants reached 250000 tons per year. All manufacturers are in the situation of inevitable large-scale reduction of production, especially for products used in lamination and electronic industry. According to reports, the demand for epoxy resin in Japan in 2002 was 130000 tons, a slight increase of 2% over 2001. This is due to the fact that the IT industry got rid of the recession in 2001 in 2002, and the electronic and electrical appliances sector achieved an 11% growth; In other fields, such as coatings, the consumption is reduced by 5 tons, and civil engineering, construction and bonding are still in a downturn. International industry analysts believe that Japan's epoxy resin production is expected to remain at a platform of 160000 tons in the next few years. Reasons why it is difficult to recover to a high level. The most important is that laminate manufacturers, such as Taiwan, China, South Asia plastics, the world's top manufacturers, and Mainland China manufacturers have initiated plans to produce their own epoxy resin, which inevitably leads to a significant decline in the current export orders of 40000 tons/year. Even on a global scale, the epoxy industry is still in a state of restructuring. Ciba geigy and shell, which previously withdrew from the epoxy business, no longer appear in the Japanese market. Japan has begun to work hard to promote restructuring, because manufacturers found that in an environment of extreme competition, the share of unexpectedly found machine failure was appropriately high, and the average demand of each company was only a little more than 20000 tons. They believe that the demand is no longer stable, the competitors are developing rapidly, and the self-renewal thinking needs to promote restructuring. In fact, the problem of excess productivity of epoxy, especially layer pressing products, is becoming more and more prominent. If the demand does decline further, all manufacturers should reduce production, and the epoxy industry can only reorganize without choice. An important way for the Japanese epoxy tree to make 3D "paper cutting" structural grease industry is to find a way out overseas. Tohto Kasei (Tokyo), a subsidiary of Nippon Steel Chemical Corporation, licensed the technology to the 20000 ton/year factory of Qihua in Dalian, China to produce special epoxy resin. NAGase CO (Tokyo) and its subsidiary NAGase chemtex (Osaka) announced that they would establish a subsidiary in China to produce epoxy resin based adhesives and electronic materials. Sumitomo chemical industry company of Japan and merisol company of the United Kingdom (headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa) began to operate the production of the epoxy resin raw material intermediate plant jointly invested by them. Sumitomo accounted for 80% of the investment and merisol accounted for 20%. The joint company built a new plant in the Republic of South Africa to produce cresol phenolic epoxy resin (OCN), which is an intermediate raw material of epoxy resin for semiconductor packaging. The Greater Japan ink chemicals company (DIC) recently announced that it would provide the larger Czech chemical company spolchemie with a technology license to produce bisphenol a liquid epoxy resin. The company accounted for 10% of the shares in epispol, a new epoxy resin company established by SPOL chemical. This new epispol company used this technology in a production plant with a high thermal coefficient of 25000 tons/year in January 2004, At the same time, DIC sold its share of products in Europe. Asahi Chem epoxy has set its own specific sales targets for five years from now. If it is achieved, the sales of epoxy resin in its electronic application field will be increased by 40 ~ 60% from the current level. As part of this plan, the company will transfer its research and development function department from Takarazuka to Mizushima factory