The commission was split between an optimist faction which thought that demand for ethylene by 1985 would be 4 million tons per year and a pessimist faction that thought demand would be 3.6 million tons, the same as last year. The industry is currently suffering from a decline in exports and an increase in imports. The industry is now planning on dividing the industry into 4 groups to prevent excessive competition and concentrating their sales and production efforts. The Council also announced that it is necessary to concentrate production facilities in the most efficient facilities and disposing of excess capacity. This is a classic example of a cartel at work.
Joint action is taken to meet the market.
Inefficient companies are maintained and market forces ignored. The evening edition of the same paper announced that Idemitsu Kosan had announced that it would delay construction of a new ethylene plant for another year and a half. The plant was to have a capacity of 300,000 tons per year. However, with the rest of the industry entering a recession cartel, it did not look appropriate for this company to add massive new capacity. Industry pressure reportedly caused the decision.