Kobe Steel, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Forming Joint Venture

Kobe Steel, Ltd. and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. agreed to transfer the manufacturing of crushing equipment to their 50/50 joint venture, Earth Technica Co., Ltd., on April 1, 2005. Earth Technica currently designs and markets crushing equipment.

The domestic aggregate market, the main market for the crushing equipment business, has been shrinking due to structural changes brought about by the decrease in public works, and a recovery is difficult to foresee. Kobe and Kawasaki hold leading positions in Japan's crusher market. With their main products being highly competitive, their respective menus complement each other. Utilizing their know-how in crusher technology in the growing environmental business, Kobe is involved in soil remediation, while Kawasaki supplies refuse paper and plastic fuel systems to the recycling field.

On this background, Kobe and Kawasaki agreed in January 2003 to merge their crushing equipment businesses. They also announced they would later shift manufacturing to Earth Technica. As a first step, the two companies transferred the marketing and design portions of their businesses to the joint venture, which began operations in July 2003.