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Chemical subsidiary, Mitsubishi Chemical Functional Products,
will supply titanium roofing material for China's National
Grand Theater, which is under construction in Beijing.
The material, marketed as Alpolic fr/TCM, comprises a
core of inorganic material sandwiched between sheets of
titanium. |
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Mitsubishi Chemical Functional Products' roofing
material will top off China's National Grand Theater.
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The
Chinese government is building the National Grand Theater
beside the Great Hall of the People on Tienanmen Square.
It commissioned France's Paul Andreau to design the theater,
which is slated for completion in 2004. Andreau is the lead
architect at Aeroports de Paris, which is famous for distinctive
renditions in glass and metal at Paris's Charles de Gaulle
Airport and at other airports. He responded with a spectacular
complex of three halls for concerts, opera and traditional
Chinese music, which will have a total seating capacity
of about 6,000 people.
Andreau has arranged the halls in an egg-shaped
dome that will be 220 meters long, 150 meters wide, and
49 meters high and will float on an artificial lake. He
has employed a combination of glass and metal for the expansive
roof. Mitsubishi Chemical Functional Products will supply
43,000 square meters of Alpolic fr/TCM for the metallic
portions of the roof.
Mitsubishi Chemical Functional Products' composite
materials are popular with architects worldwide because
they are strong, light, anticorrosive and noncombustible,
and titanium adds the additional appeal of highly attractive
color. The company's role in the Beijing project has captured
attention from the group responsible for building a huge
theater in Hangzhou. Next time you're at the theater in
China, look up. You might see three diamonds on the roof.
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Kirin
Brewery has added a new dimension to its growing Chinese
presence. In January, it launched a Chinese product based
on its popular Ichiban Shibori brewing method. Producing
the new product is a brewery operated in Suzhou, China,
by Kirin's Australia-based subsidiary, Lion Nathan. Kirin
launched the beer in Shanghai with an eye to raising its
profile in the crucial Yangtze River delta region.
China is the world's second-largest market
for beer, after the United States, and demand there continues
to grow. Lion Nathan operates a brewery in Wuxi, China,
as well as in Suzhou, and has built a solid foothold in
the medium-priced segment of the market. Kirin has priced
its new offering at the high end of that segment. Management
hopes to steer large numbers of Chinese beer drinkers toward
higher-grade brews. |
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A
lot of attention has focused on a set of proposals presented
by Mitsubishi Corporation chairman Minoru Makihara to Japanese
prime minister Junichiro Koizumi in December. Aimed at revitalizing
the Japanese economy, the proposals outline concrete ways
of expanding foreign direct investments into Japan. They
culminated three months of work by Invest Japan Forum, a
group of 12 leaders from Japanese industry, academia and
local government (see Mitsubishi Monitor, December 2002/January
2003).
Japan has received comparatively low levels
of foreign direct investments, and Prime Minister Koizumi
expressed hearty agreement with the Forum's proposals. In
a policy speech to parliament, he set forth a target of
doubling foreign direct investments into Japan.
The Forum made 12 proposals, which cover removing
obstacles and promoting investment proactively. They include
calls for legislation to promote cross-border mergers and
acquisitions, drastic tax reform to promote inward foreign
direct investments and the establishment of an office to
encourage the investments, among other measures.
Calling for "the third opening of Japan,"
the Forum noted that strong leadership by the prime minister
will be essential, especially in changing the Japanese mindset
and publicizing the advantages of investing in Japan to
investors outside the nation. The Forum will cooperate actively
with the government in promoting foreign direct investments
into Japan. Its members hope to stimulate discussion nationwide
in regard to the importance of attracting foreign direct
investments and to means of encouraging those investments.
The full text of the Forum's proposals, "Revitalizing
the Japanese Economy by Expanding FDIs into Japan"
is available on the Internet at www5.cao.go.jp/keizai1/2002/1219tainichi/1219item1-2-e.pdf |
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| Mitsubishi
Rayon set up a wholly owned subsidiary in China in December
to manufacture and market acrylic sheet. Mitsubishi Rayon
Polymer Nantong Co., Ltd., the new company, is in Nantong,
Jiangsu Province and will begin operation in 2005. |
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Mitsubishi Rayon Polymer Nantong will supply acrylic
sheet for panels like the ones in this photo.
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The
largest producer of acrylic sheet in Asia, Mitsubishi Rayon
is equipping its newest Chinese subsidiary with state-of-the-art
production technology. That technology supports compelling
advantages in product quality and production volume. It
will position Mitsubishi Rayon Polymer Nantong as Asia's
most-advanced manufacturer of acrylic sheet outside Japan.
The new company is adjacent to another Mitsubishi Rayon
subsidiary, Nantong Rayon Chemical Co Ltd, which will begin
producing acrylic resin pellets this autumn.
Mitsubishi Rayon Polymer Nantong will have
an initial production capacity of 20,000 tons a year. That
will be with a single production line. The line will rank
among the world's largest in production capacity. Its acrylic
sheet will be for optical panels in telecommunications equipment
and other information technology products. The plant will
help Mitsubishi Rayon cope with surging demand for acrylic
sheet in China and throughout Asia. |
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IT
Frontier, a Mitsubishi company that specializes in developing
and supporting corporate information systems, has introduced
a system for preventing unauthorized network access. In
cooperation with Japan Trusted Systems Lab, it offers consulting,
development and maintenance services in support of security
systems.
The two companies provide the security services
mainly in connection with a so-called trusted operating
system from the U.S. company Argus Systems Group, Inc. Trusted
operating systems supplement firewall and intruder-detection
functions with data protection at the level of the operating
system. Argus's PitBull product is the dominant trusted
operating system product for the Solaris, AIX and Linux
operating systems. |
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| Mitsubishi
Fuso Truck & Bus Corporation, recently spun off from
Mitsubishi Motors, has joined the Mitsubishi Public Affairs
Committee, the publisher of the Mitsubishi Monitor. Read
about the new member in the June/July issue of the Monitor. |
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Mitsubishi Materials, Asia's largest
producer of copper, continues to disseminate its clean
and energy-saving smelting technology. That technology,
the Mitsubishi Process, underlies a recently completed
expansion project at LG-Nikko Copper, Inc.'s huge Onsan
Smelter complex in the Republic of Korea. |
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The Mitsubishi Process supports clean, energy-efficient
operation at LG-Nikko's Onsan Smelter.
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LG-Nikko
adopted the Mitsubishi Process when it added a second smelter
at the Onsan complex in 1998. That smelter has captured
international attention with its clean, energy-efficient
operation, and LG-Nikko expanded its annual production capacity
in 2002 to 284,000 tons, from 230,000. The expanded plant
underwent five months of trial operation to verify its performance
and now is in full-scale operation. In the Onsan Smelter
project, Mitsubishi Materials handled the process engineering
work as well as supplying core equipment and providing supervisory
services during the commissioning of the plant addition.
Mitsubishi Materials employs the Mitsubishi
Process at its own smelters in Japan and Indonesia and licenses
the process to other producers around the world. An especially
important advantage of the process is its flexible expandability.
LG-Nikko was able to increase its smelter's capacity without
enlarging the original furnace by adding core facilities
and increasing the oxygen enrichment. |
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Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries recently received an order for the world's
fastest newspaper printing machines. The order is from Japan's
Yomiuri Shimbun, the nation's largest newspaper, and is
for four machines. The machines, LITHOPIA BTO-N Diamondstar
newspaper offset presses, will each be capable of turning
out 180,000 newspapers per hour. They will go into service
at two Yomiuri printing plants in Kyoto and Osaka in 2004
and 2005. |
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Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corporation will soon make
sweltering Singapore a more pleasant place to be. The two
companies have won a contract to equip the Singapore Marina
South urban development project with a huge district cooling
system. Their system will supply chilled water to cool offices
and shops in two 50-story buildings. The contract is with
Singapore District Cooling Pte, Ltd., a joint venture between
Singapore Power Ltd. and the French contracting firm Dalkia.
Five massive electric turbo chillers and a
pair of ice storage systems constitute the heart of the
cooling system. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries will install
those items by February 2005. It will use the ozone-safe
refrigerant HFC-134a in the system, which will feature world-class
thermal efficiency.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' extensive record
of success in large refrigeration projects was influential
in winning the contract. State-of-the-art technology and
cost performance also were important factors. Mitsubishi
Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corporation hope to parlay
this contract into additional business as the Singapore
Marina South project progresses into further stages. |
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Dai
Nippon Toryo, a Mitsubishi company well known for its high-quality
coatings, has developed a paint to counter illicit posters
and unwelcome graffiti. The new paint, Magic Art, safeguards
walls from the malady of mischievous messages that mars
urban spaces worldwide.
Japan's metropolises once seemed relatively
immune to the plague of graffiti that is all too familiar
in their North American and European counterparts. But the
wave of visual vandalism has overtaken Japan in recent years.
And municipal authorities have been desperate for countermeasures.
Dai Nippon Toryo's solution is a paint that
sheds illicit script and posters easily. The company marketed
its first antigraffiti paint 10 years ago, and that product
has proved highly successful. With Magic Art, Dai Nippon
Toryo offers greatly improved performance. The new paint
renders surfaces easier than ever to cleanse. In addition,
Magic Art is easy to apply to all kinds of walls. And it
provides long-lasting protection. |
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"I was so happy I could have jumped."
That's how Heizo Takenaka, Japan's state minister for
financial services and economic and fiscal policy, reacted
to a large capital increase announced by Mitsubishi Tokyo
Financial Group in February. Alone among Japan's largest
financial groups, Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group has
been able to float common stock to fortify its balance
sheet and buttress its profitability. Takenaka was referring
to a move by Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group to raise
300 billion yen (about $2.5 billion) through a public
offering of common shares. He noted that the issue is
the first of its kind by a large Japanese banking group
in 13 years. |
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A new product from Mitsubishi Rayon makes
home water filters easier than ever to use. The company,
Japan's largest supplier of water filters for kitchen
faucets, recently unveiled a "universal design"
filter. Universal design is a global, multi-industry initiative
to make products easy and safe to use for people of all
ages in all likely settings. Last autumn, Mitsubishi Rayon's
water filters earned a prestigious industrial design award
given annually under the auspices of the Japanese government.
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Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., a large
drug manufacturer, has turned its Japanese distribution
over to Mitsubishi Logistics. The drug company will phase
out its internal distribution operations by 2005. Mitsubishi
Logistics will provide next-day delivery of Yamanouchi
products to wholesalers nationwide through two distribution
centers in Osaka and near Tokyo. |
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Mitsubishi
Chemical tops China's National Grand Theater
