I must get these posts out of my head! Yesterday's C&EN tidbits:
- Japan's chemical industry is not doing well and is considered high-cost; I wonder why? Article doesn't say.
- This article on lithium battery failure modes is interesting and relevant to the Boeing 787 mess.
- Private equity interested in fine chemicals companies? Um, uh, no thanks.
- This article on potential replacements for BPA in can linings was very interesting; monomer structures would have been nice.
- Of course, the very silly PriceWaterhouseCoopers report on pharma's talent gap needs to be covered.
There are potentially 2 reasons I can see for the japanese chemical industry suffering. The strong yen and high input costs. It's hard to compete in a commodity business when you're costs (no way they can compete with cheap gas/oil in the USA) and the strong yen hurts exports.
ReplyDeleteWell, Japan is DOOOOOOOOOOOOOMed anyways, according to demographers who are also economists. The year 2016 looks to be it according to this:
ReplyDeletehttp://japanjapan.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/japans-looming-singularity.html