Japanese			The manufacturing operation of F-10 automotive lining board was initiated some twenty-five years ago by then Fukuoka Paper Co., Ltd. After the company was absorbed by Honshu Paper Co., Ltd. in 1985, Japanese car-makers started to establish their own manufacturing plants in U.S. and some other countries overseas, and Honshu Paper also started to establish its subsidiaries overseas to have them engage in the manufacturing of F-10 board there. The 50/50 Joint-venture Company between Honshu Paper and Weyerhaeuser Company (U.S. paper-maker) helped Honshu Paper to develop and promote those overseas operations. F-10 related overseas subsidiaries are currently in U.S., U.K. and Korea (A friendly company of ours are molding and selling F-10 boards in Taiwan, too). Those three subsidiaries are introduced as below: 1. U.S.A. Name of the Company : Oji Intertech, Inc. (f/k/a EFTEN Inc.) Established : June 25, 1985 Location : head-office/plant in North Manchester, Indiana sales office in Arbun Hills, Michigan Employees : abt. 70 including part-time employees Capital : U.S.$ 982,196 (abt. 117,863 thousand yen) Annual Sales (2001) : $ 9,323,187 (abt. 1,118,782 thousand yen) Products : manufacturing of F-10 automotive lining board, membrane, laminated products, die-cut products, and molding of automotive lining board Current status : The first F-10 related subsidiary established overseas. For years after its establishment, its products were 100% F-10 board to be supplied mainly to Japanese automotive interior materials makers in U.S. Later as they withdrew one after another from U.S. market, the company gradually expanded its business to U.S. Tier-1 molding companies working for Big Three Car-makers, and now established itself as highly sophisticated automotive parts maker in U.S. 2. Development of F-10 Interior materials in the future F-board has been used as automotive lining board for as long as 25 years in Japan, and for more than 10 years overseas. With increasing competition from new types of automotive lining board, less and less number of F-10 board are being used, and its life-cycle is nearly approaching its end. Our overseas subsidiaries are doing their best to develop something else to be offered in replacement of F-10 board. A majority of automotive lining board developed anew are made of glass fibre in order to maintain the rigidity and dimensional stability, but because of the impact of recent laws and regulations governing the environmental problems, the trend is not to use the glass fibre any more. Under such circumstances, the following two items are on the way of development in order to meet the customers' requirement: 1) PPF: A new type of automotive lining board made of Poliorephin resin with the following features: (1) no glass fibre is used (2) light weight (3) recyclable (4) deep moldability 2) APS: Unwoven fabric of polyester fibre is fabricated into the corrugated fibreboard construction. It absorbs substantital volume of sound, and is recyclable. They are on the way of improving the problems of strength and pricing.