Home> Press Release> Press Release (2004)> ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd. Begins Nationwide Sales of Resin Seat Skid
Made by Large-size RIM

ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd. Begins Nationwide Sales of Resin
Seat Skid Made by Large-size RIM
November 17, 2004
ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd. (2-4-1 Shiba Koen, Minato-ku, Tokyo; President: Hitoshi Ozawa), a wholly
owned subsidiary of ZEON Corporation (President & CEO: Naozumi Furukawa) has developed and begun
selling nationwide a Resin Seat Skid as a logistical material to transport automobile seats.

There are three strong points of the product:(1) Compared with existing wooden products, it does not generate small woodden particles and is unlikely tocontaminate assembly lines.
(2) Compared with steel products, it is lightweight (specific gravity comparison: metal 7.8; this resin 1.01)(3) It exhibits excellent properties of RIM products including: (a) high impact strength especially against low
temperature impact; (b) possible for thick molding that significantly improves freedom of design; and (c) lower
cost of the metal molds compared with that for injection moldings, providing a large-sized product at a low price.
Automobile seats are loaded, transported, and stored on seat skids (seat palettes) as conveyance equipment byseat manufacturers, and sometimes the seats are brought to the assembly line leaving on these seat skids.
Conventionally, seats have been assembled with various parts on wooden or steel seat skids (seat palettes).
However, there were issues on (1) improving assembly efficiency; (2) remove small woodden particles
contamination at automobile assembly lines; and (3) the need to reduce weight. Resin Seat Skid was developed
to solve these issues and now the company puts on full-scale sale nationwide.
Resin Seat Skid marketed by ZEON Logistical Materials are a new thermosetting resin seat skid which ismanufactured by RIM (Reaction Injection Molding) with dicyclopetadien (DCPD; a C5 fraction of naphtha) as theprimary raw material. This DCPD Resin Seat Skid is produced by the energy and resource-efficient RIM in which
reaction and forming are carried out simultaneously in metal molds. Therefore, strong, lightweight, clean, largesize, and complicated-shaped molded products can be made in an extremely short time with an inexpensive
investment in metal molds under simpler conditions. Currently, RIM products are used for various items,
including components of housing equipment, construction machinery parts, and bumpers of large vehicles.

ZEON Logistical Materials has already made phased-in sales of DCPD seat skids, and several automobile seat
manufacturers are using them. The company accumulated original technology in the process of development
and the phased-in sales. For full-scale sales of DCPD (resin) seat skids, the company intends to offer products toachieve higher user satisfaction by combining the resin compounding and molding technologies that the ZEONGroup has cultivated for many years and this newly acquired original technology as well as the know-how anddesign technology in the logistics department of the company.
The company also is forging ahead in the development and sales of not only seat skid for automobile seats(palettes) but also custom-made DCPD seat skids (palettes) with various shapes requested by customers in allindustries. These custom-made palettes have unique properties and the company is confident that they willcontribute to streamlining the manufacturing and logistics of users, as FA (Factory Automation) palettes for
production and inventory management used exclusively inside the plants of each company.
Supplementary explanation
On July 1, 2003, ZEON Kasei Co., Ltd. (President: Takao Fukushima), a wholly owned subsidiary of ZEON
Corporation, spun off the operation of its logistical materials business—one of its core businesses—established
as ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd., an integrated manufacturing and sales company for logistical materials,
to enhance its market presence and further develop the business. ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd. wascapitalized at \100 million: 70% from ZEON Kasei Co., Ltd. and 30% from ZEON Corporation.

For further information
ZEON Logistical Materials Co., Ltd., Sales Department
Tel: (Tokyo) +81-3-5208-5167 Tel: (Osaka) +81-6-6398-2938
Zeon Corporation,
Department of Corporate Communications
Tel: +81-3-3216-2747