The molten glass floats on the tin and gradually cools until it forms a continuous ribbon. The solid state form is conveyed into another furnace known as an annealing lehr, where the controlled cooling process is completed. The continuous glass ribbon is then cut into the customers sizes and packaged for shipment. PPG in Japan PPG s interest in the Japanese market is long standing. Indeed, PPG entered the Japanese flat glass market in 1967 and has had a continuous presence ever since.
Japan has the second largest glass market in the world.
It is, therefore, an important one from both economic and strategic points of view. Our efforts, however, have yielded very little success due to fundamental distortions in Japan s flat glass market. Moreover, the evidence available to us strongly suggests that the Japanese producers originally established a collusive market allocation arrangement with the knowledge and acceptance of their government. For as long as I can remember, the market shares in Japan of the three Japanese glass producers have remained essentially the same. These practices have been and are pervasive and of a nature that, if undertaken in the U.S. market, would be subject to intense antitrust enforcement activity by authorities at the federal and state level.