Itochu concludes exclusive license agreement with EconCore

Itochu Corporation and EconCore have concluded an exclusive license agreement for logistics and packaging markets in Asia-Pacific Region including Japan and the Middle East. By combining the aerospace material technology with the manufacturing technology of packaging materials, EconCore has successfully developed new proprietary technologies to continuously produce honeycomb cores using plastics and paper as raw materials. These new technologies have increased the productivity significantly. As the first step to commercialize the licensed technologies, Itochu has concluded a sublicensing agreement for the Japanese market with Gifu Plastic Industry Co., Ltd., a leading general manufacturer of plastics in Japan. Confident that it will be able to save energy by reducing the weight of the logistic and packaging materials while achieving high performance, Gifu plans to launch its first products that employ the new technologies on the market in 2009, and aims to generate annual sales of 20 billion yen with these technologies in 10 years.

Itochu Corporation is one of Japans leading trading companies and is engaged in a wide variety of businesses, including textiles, machinery, aerospace, information technology, multimedia, metals, energy, chemicals, forest products, food, retail, financial services and so forth.

For more information, please click on the following link:
http://www.itochu.co.jp/main/news/2008/news_080813e.html