Manufacturing

The news sent Bridgestone’s shares surging upwards by as much as nine percent to 2.791 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

The company’s profits have been helped in part by the production boost at Japan's leading carmakers as they continue to recover from the 2011 natural disasters, while at the same time a recovery in demand from the US car market has also helped boost sales of Japanese carmakers, driving up demand for car parts.

Toyota now forecasts a net profit of $9.3 billion for the financial year to 31 March 2013. This comes on the back of profits being boosting by the yen falling as much as 15 percent against the US dollar since November 2012. A weak yen helps Japanese companies like Toyota which rely heavily on overseas sales.

The company issued the guidance as it posted a 23 percent jump in profit for the September to December quarter. The numbers mean that Toyota's earnings for the April to December period nearly quadrupled from a year earlier.

The company provided further optimism by also revealing that its backlog of plane orders also hit an all-time high of $390 billion as it began delivering the first of its new flagship Dreamliner 787 jets.

"In a year of considerable achievement, Boeing was the commercial aviation market leader for both orders and deliveries, with more than 600 airplanes delivered, including the first Charleston-built 787 Dreamliners," said chief executive Jim McNerney.

ChemSystems has been a fixture of the chemicals industry for over five decades. Sales director, Laurence Davies, and business development manager, Charles Du Bois, discuss how the company is now making a name for itself in the oil and gas sector.

KapStone Paper and Packaging Corporation is to open a new corrugated manufacturing facility in Aurora, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago. 

The 192,000 square foot facility will produce corrugated packaging and will also include a design lab and a technical center.

KapStone expects to invest approximately $8 million to $10 million in the first phase. The Aurora location will enhance KapStone's sales coverage in the Midwest, particularly in Chicago and surrounding areas.

As a diversified manufacturer of chemicals and a major tank terminal operator, Coogee Chemicals enters 2013 with the clear aim of continuing the work that has made it one of the sector’s biggest success stories.

For almost four decades Lanka Walltiles has remained a leading figure in the Sri Lankan ceramic tile market. Managing director Mahendra Jayasekera explains how unwavering quality and the embracing of new technologies have made this so.

Global tobacco giant British American Tobacco is realigning its supply chain function to improve operational efficiency. Gay Sutton talks to Bernd Meyer, Global Head of Plan, Logistics and Service about bringing these three erstwhile separate functions together.

Ford Motor Company plans to hire 2,200 salaried workers in the US this year, the largest increase in more than a decade, to support the pace of new product introductions.

The planned hiring is in addition to more than 8,100 combined hourly and salaried jobs Ford added in the US in 2012, as the company increased production capacity and expanded engineering, manufacturing and other areas. Approximately 1,000 of these positions were hourly jobs brought back to Ford plants in the US from other locations, including suppliers in Japan and Mexico.

Chief executive officer Ismail Dockrat discusses the restructuring programme that has contributed to this South African success story.

In the nearly two decades since 1994, air travel into South Africa has increased by approximately 70 percent. In fact, during the month long staging of the 2010 FIFA World Cup alone it is estimated that over one million foreigners visited the country. These figures go some way to highlighting the reason why the aviation sector in this part of the world has undergone such tremendous growth in recent times.