
Thai chemical giant Indorama buys into Indian packaging maker
BANGKOK -- Thai petrochemical company Indorama Ventures has taken a roughly 25% stake in Indian packaging manufacturer EPL from U.S. investment firm Blackstone, tapping rising demand from India's growing population.
Indorama is paying an estimated $220 million for the shares. Mumbai-based EPL, which employs around 3,500 people, makes daily necessities as well as specialized products such as plastic tubes for the health care industry.

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Nikkei Asia
an hour ago
- Nikkei Asia
Vietnam's FPT launches Japan hub to support Subaru digitization
MAEBASHI, Japan -- Vietnam's largest tech company, FPT, has launched full operations at an office in Japan that will assist Subaru's digitization efforts. Tokyo-based subsidiary FPT Japan Holdings in December opened the FPT Gunma Mobility DX Hub in Ota, Gunma prefecture, the 18th company location in the country.


SoraNews24
13 hours ago
- SoraNews24
New Studio Ghibli Uniqlo T-shirt line coming to the U.S., Japan left out once again【Photos】
Eight Ghibli anime movies inspire new collection of tees and sweatshirts. Uniqlo has announced some pretty big-name collaborations with the anime/manga world this summer, including new partnerships with Pokémon and Ai Yazawa. But the casual clothing chain isn't done adding anime flare to fans' wardrobes yet, as they've now announced a brand-new line of Studio Ghibli apparel. However, as has become oddly the norm for Uniqlo Ghibli collections, once again these items won't be offered in Japan. Instead, they appear to be exclusive (at least for now) to Uniqlo U.S.A. As with the previous Uniqlo Ghibli items, these designs were created by Thai artist Kanyada Phatan, who contributes photography and poetry to Neppu, a monthly magazine published by Studio Ghibli. The new collection consists of both short-sleeved T-shirts and long-sleeved sweatshirts, featuring characters from eight Ghibli anime films, including, of course, My Neighbor Totoro, with the Catbus hanging out near the nape of your neck on this shirt. While some of the designs take their illustrations directly from their source anime, others are original creations, like on the Totoro sweatshirt, which has some Soot Sprites congregating near the left cuff. The Howl's Moving Castle design uses pretty much the entire front of the shirt as a canvas for the titular mobile architecture… …and there's no missing No Face, blazingly emblazoned in triplicate across the front of the Spirited Away sweatshirt, which also bears the film's Japanese title, Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi. ▼ This time there's a Radish Spirit hanging out on the sleeve. Some of the designs are double-sided, with graphics on both the front and back, like with the Princess Mononoke sweatshirt. Set in a forest green field on the front is monster princess San, accompanied with raised text of the film's promotional poster tagline in Japan, 'Ikiro' ('Live' or 'Survive'). San appears on the back as well, underneath Ashitaka, with the movie's Japanese-text title, Mononoke-hime, overlapping them. There's more princess-related attire with the The Tale of the Princess Kaguya T-shirt… …and another Ghibli anime that doesn't get a lot of merchandising attention, Pom Poko, is here too. Along with the movie's Japanese title and the kanji character for tanuki (狸), the text on the back identifies the wearer as a member of the human-observing tanuki research team, while the front graphic is, as far as our analysis can tell, the first-ever depiction of testicles on a Uniqlo T-shirt. ▼ Though these are culturally relevant testicles. A less ballsy option is this Kiki's Delivery Service sweatshirt, which is both dual-sided and bilingual. Rounding out the single-movie designs, The Boy and the Heron gets two pieces, a T-shirt with the Gray Heron unnervingly saying 'My Dear' on the front while the back reminds you of who made the movie as the scene-stealing Warawara remind you of just how adorable the little marshmallow-like creatures are. The sweatshirt flips their positions around, with the Warawara on the front and the Gray Heron on the back. And finally, rounding out the adult-sized collection is an overarching Studio Ghibli T-shirt, with illustrations of Porco Rosso's protagonist, Nausicaa, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky's Dola, and The Wind Rise's Ka-14 aircraft, which would eventually evolve into the Imperial Japanese Navy's World War II Zero fighter plane. The T-shirts are all priced at US$24.90, and the sweatshirts at US$39.90. The entire collection will be available on July 10 at Uniqlo stores in the U.S. and through the chain's U.S. online shop here. Source: Uniqlo via Yahoo! Japan News via Game Watch Top image: Uniqlo Insert images: Uniqlo (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) ● Want to hear about SoraNews24's latest articles as soon as they're published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!


Asahi Shimbun
15 hours ago
- Asahi Shimbun
Global alarms rise as China's critical mineral export curbs take hold
Alarm over China's stranglehold on critical minerals grew on Tuesday as global automakers joined their U.S. counterparts to complain that restrictions by China on exports of rare earth alloys, mixtures and magnets could cause production delays and outages without a quick solution. German automakers became the latest to warn that China's export restrictions threaten to shut down production and rattle their local economies, following a similar complaint from an Indian EV maker last week. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of critical minerals and magnets has upended the supply chains central to automakers, aerospace manufacturers, semiconductor companies and military contractors around the world. The move underscores China's dominance of the critical mineral industry and is seen as leverage by China in its ongoing trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump has sought to redefine the trading relationship with the U.S.' top economic rival China by imposing steep tariffs on billions of dollars of imported goods in hopes of narrowing a wide trade deficit and bringing back lost manufacturing. Trump imposed tariffs as high as 145% against China only to scale them back after stock, bond and currency markets revolted over the sweeping nature of the levies. China has responded with its own tariffs and is leveraging its dominance in key supply chains to persuade Trump to back down. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to talk this week, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Tuesday, and the export ban is expected to be high on the agenda. 'I can assure you that the administration is actively monitoring China's compliance with the Geneva trade agreement,' she said. 'Our administration officials continue to be engaged in correspondence with their Chinese counterparts.' Trump has previously signaled that China's slow pace of easing the critical mineral export ban represents a violation of the Geneva agreement. Shipments of the magnets, essential for assembling everything from cars and drones to robots and missiles, have been halted at many Chinese ports while license applications make their way through the Chinese regulatory system. The suspension has triggered anxiety in corporate boardrooms and nations' capitals - from Tokyo to Washington - as officials scrambled to identify limited alternative options amid fears that production of new automobiles and other items could grind to a halt by summer's end. 'If the situation is not changed quickly, production delays and even production outages can no longer be ruled out,' Hildegard Mueller, head of Germany's auto lobby, told Reuters on Tuesday. Frank Fannon, a minerals industry consultant and former U.S. assistant secretary of state for energy resources during Trump's first term, said the global disruptions are not shocking to those paying attention. 'I don't think anyone should be surprised how this is playing out. We have a production challenge (in the U.S.) and we need to leverage our whole of government approach to secure resources and ramp up domestic capability as soon as possible. The time horizon to do this was yesterday,' Fannon. Diplomats, automakers and other executives from India, Japan and Europe were urgently seeking meetings with Beijing officials to push for faster approval of rare earth magnet exports, sources told Reuters, as shortages threatened to halt global supply chains. A business delegation from Japan will visit Beijing in early June to meet the Ministry of Commerce over the curbs and European diplomats from countries with big auto industries have also sought 'emergency' meetings with Chinese officials in recent weeks, Reuters reported. India, where Bajaj Auto warned that any further delays in securing the supply of rare earth magnets from China could 'seriously impact' electric vehicle production, is organizing a trip for auto executives in the next two to three weeks. In May, the head of the trade group representing General Motors, Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai and other major automakers raised similar concerns in a letter to the Trump administration. 'Without reliable access to these elements and magnets, automotive suppliers will be unable to produce critical automotive components, including automatic transmissions, throttle bodies, alternators, various motors, sensors, seat belts, speakers, lights, motors, power steering, and cameras,' the Alliance for Automotive Innovation wrote in the letter.