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March 7, 2001
Ube Industries Establishes
Integrated Company for Aluminum Wheel Business
News Release
On April 1, 2001, Ube Industries, Ltd. (Kazumasa
Tsunemi, company president) established Ube Automotive, Ltd., a
unified company for the aluminum-wheel business. The company is
capitalized at 560,000,000 yen including additional paid-in
capital, and its corporate office will be in Minato-ku, Tokyo.
Ube Industries, Ltd. separated its Aluminum
Wheel Division from Ube Machinery Corporation, Ltd. in order to
form Ube Automotive Ltd., a unified company for the aluminum
wheel business.
The establishment of this company brings the
following companies into the same group: U-MOLD Co., Ltd., which
is already in operation in Ube City, Yamaguchi Prefecture with a
production capacity of 2,200,000 units per year; Ube Automotive
North America Mason Plant Inc. (formerly the A-Mold Corporation
operating in the state of Ohio in the United States with a
production capacity of 1,400,000 units per year); and Ube
Automotive North America Sarnia Plant Inc., which was
established as a company in June 2000 and is currently
constructing a facility in Ontario, Canada, that will have a
production capacity of 2,250,000 units per year.
Ube has positioned the aluminum-wheel
business as one of its new core businesses. However, the rapid
globalization by the world's main automobile manufacturers
demands that a global supplier system be established that can
offer unified engineering, quality, pricing, and fast service.
In order to meet these needs and to improve productivity, the
three manufacturing factories in Japan, the USA, and Canada by
been unified into one group under Ube Automotive, Ltd. When the
factory in Canada reaches its full production capacity in 2005,
the production capacity of the group will be 6 million units per
year (or approximately 60 billion yen in sales).
The aluminum wheels manufactured using the
squeeze process developed exclusively by Ube offers levels of
strength and rigidity coupled with light weight that were not
possible with previous manufacturing processes. These aluminum
wheels are popular with the world's major automotive
manufacturers who see these products as the perfect way to
reduce the weight of the automobile for improving fuel
consumption and meeting environmental restrictions. Because of
this superior quality and technology, demand from markets in
Japan, North America, and Europe is sure to increase.
Unified Company Name:
Ube Automotive, Ltd.
Seabans North Building 1-2-1 Shibaura Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-6791, Japan
For more information
Ube Industries, Ltd.
Seabans North Building 1-2-1 Shibaura Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-8449, Japan
Attn : Mr. Satoshi Kunita, Chief of IR Public
Relations
Phone : +81-03-5419-6110
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