OREANDA-NEWS. April 04, 2011. Plastics products made by Nippon Giken Industrial Co., Ltd a Sumitomo Corp. group company.

Synthetic resin, a word that may not be familiar to many of us, are commonly known as plastics. It is no exaggeration to say that in the modern world we are surrounded and sustained by plastics. Interior parts of refrigerators, parts of the rice cookers, plastic wraps, lighting covers, floorings, PET bottles, garbage bags, plastics bags from supermarkets etc found in our kitchen, are made of plastics. Air conditioners, television sets, personal computer and other home appliances found in our living room are made of almost nothing but plastics. Vehicles parked outside houses also use numerous plastics parts. Plastics are essentials for our lives.
It was about half a century ago that plastics gradually began to take the place of woods and steels, which had been used for making a wide variety of goods. Produced from mainly oil and natural gas as base materials, plastics products are durable and long-lasting, while far less inexpensive than natural products. In addition, plastics products can be mass produced with high consistency in quality. These advantages underpin the growth in demand for plastics. For example, the cost of a solid timber door for a house would be extremely high, whereas that of a plastics door would be far lower; it also realizes excellent durability. As such, plastics are something we cannot do without in our lives today.

Extensive lineup ranging from commoditye plastics to high-performance plastics

Plastics are the most prevalent chemical products we use in our daily lives. Along with the steel and metal industries, the plastics industry is a key industry. Given this, the industrialization of a developing country usually begins with a budding plastics processing industry.

Sumitomo Corporation has been involved in plastics trading of plastics for half a century. Currently, Sumitomo is involved in the trade of a wide variety of plastics products including polyolefins, ones with the highest demand, and Poly Vinyl Chloride (PVC).

By leveraging its extensive global marketing network, Sumitomo supplies plastics manufactured in Japan, Asia and the Middle East to developed countries having a big market as well as to developing countries haing an emerging market. Sumitomo's advantage lies in its extensive lineup, ranging from commodity plastics to high-performance plastics, enabling it to meet wide-ranging needs for plastics. The most popular ones are plastics bags for keeping meat, fish, and other foods, and garbage bags.

High-performance plastics products include films for sandwiching silicon used in photovoltaic panels and automotive parts such as bumpers, dashboards, and lamp covers. Potato chip packaging material is in fact also made of high-performance plastics. Packaging for potato chips needs to shut out light and moisture, to keep flavours inside the package, to be easy to open. To be nice looking is also important to attract consumers.. To meet these needs, the packaging material comes in the form of a multilayered structure, comprising an aluminum-evaporated film, a waterproof film, and a film with a low melting point that allows thermocompression bonding.

The Sumitomo Corporation Group is capable to respond to diverse needs on a global basis, contributing to enhanced standards of living worldwide through the supply of plastics.