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| May 30, 2000 | ||
| Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi reach accord relating to metal rolling mills | |||||||||||||||||
| TOKYO, Japan, May 30, 2000 �| Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) (TSE:7011) and Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE:HIT) today announced that they have agreed to form a broad-based partnership in the area of metal rolling mills. | |||||||||||||||||
| The agreement will bring together MHI's extensive experience and technology
in hot- rolling mill plants and constituent mill itself, and Hitachi's
expertise and achievements in cold-rolling mill plant and mill-proper
technology. In October, MHI and Hitachi plan to establish a joint venture
company to handle sales of rolling mills used to produce flat-rolled
steel products, and high-value-added machinery for steel strip's processing.
The new company's sales and its related engineering activities will
mainly target overseas markets. In order to further strengthen their competitive advantages in the product sectors concerned, the companies are also considering expanding the scope of their cooperation to include areas such as design and manufacturing. The currency crises that beset Southeast Asia led to new orders for steel manufacturing, rolling or processing plants being frozen or postponed, thus competition by overseas plant and equipment suppliers continued to increase, creating a extremely difficult climate in this business sector. However, in China and elsewhere in the region, there are signs of a recovery in demand for steel. The lack of sufficient production capacity is therefore likely to generate increased demand for rolling mills and related facilities. For their part, manufacturers of such equipment are finding themselves having to maintain their high technological capabilities while at the same time providing their engineering forces with more competitive edges through design conscious of maintenance, operation know-how, etc. and making their products more cost-competitive. Pair Cross (PC) mills, best fitting a wide range of steel rolling such as end-less rolling of very thin hot strip, high-yield rolling of steel plate, etc. and Online Roll Grinder(ORG) are examples of MHI's core equipment technology that, together with the company's extensive references as a supplier of hot-rolling mills to iron and steelworks around the world, form the foundation of MHI's ability to meet customers' all-round requirements in the area of rolling and steel strip processing. Along with this, MHI continues to be on the cutting-edge of development in the area of rolling mill technology. Hitachi's highly successful shape-control HC Mills and UC Mills form the core of a family of steel-sheet rolling products that are helping manufacturers around the world improve quality, yield and productivity. Moreover, they are rationalizing operations by combining conventional production process steps and enabling innovations such as schedule-free rolling. Hitachi also possesses the technology and capabilities for developing systems and equipment used in manufacturing the fine steel and light, high-strength steel products needed in the 21st century. The new company will use these world-leading technologies owned possessed by MHI and Hitachi to establish the engineering capabilities and cost-competitiveness needed to win out against the competition in Europe and elsewhere, and thereby secure a position of global leadership. MHI and Hitachi will also focus on eliminating overlapping between the resources and developmental efforts committed by each side in the areas concerned.
Press Contac Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. Hiroyuki Okada Tel: +81-3-3212-9173 Hitachi, Ltd. Japan Keisaku Shibatani Tel: +81-3-3258-2057 # # #
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