The Shanghai brown glass bulb manufacturing facilities of Japan“s Asahi Glass Co. are ready for operations ahead of schedule. Specifically, panel production will begin about six months earlier than p…
The Shanghai brown glass bulb manufacturing facilities of Japan“s Asahi Glass Co. are ready for operations ahead of schedule. Specifically, panel production will begin about six months earlier than planned. The panels to be produced are the 20″-25″ variety, and production capacity is 4 million units. The company intends for a third of those panels to be exported. In China the color TV market is expanding quickly, and Asahi is hurrying to establish its supply operations. According to a company official, Asahi is also considering setting up a glass bulb plant in Mexico with an investment of about JPY 10-20 billion. “A formal announcement will be made sometime during 1996,” said Nobuo Tanaka, Asahi Glass“s executive vice-president, who is in charge of the glass bulb business. He said Asahi plans to set up another glass bulb plant of a similar size in 1996, but declined to give details. Tanaka also explained that demand for glass bulbs is particularly strong in the United States, helped by a sharp rise in sales of PCs there. Furthermore, Asahi Fiber Glass Co. Ltd. has been granted exclusive rights to market in Japan ceiling suspension grid systems produced by the international unit of US-based USG Corp. The Japanese firm plans to sell the grid systems packaged with its own glass wool ceiling tiles.