Yazaki to Improve Profitability for Electric Cable Division

Yazaki Corporation aims to gain operating profit for the electric wire and cable business division for the year to June 2007. The firm continues cost cut efforts in production and distribution processes and seeks price hike to pass increasing material costs which the firm cannot absorb by itself. The firm raised the selling margin for electric cable by 4-5% in April-June 2006 when copper price jumped up. However, the firm has not passed the increasing costs enough yet for copper and sub materials such as sheath materials.Yazaki is one of Japanese major 5 maker brands for electric wire and cable applied to building construction. The electric wire and cable division posted 64.5 billion yen of net sales for a fiscal year ended June 2006, which increased by 29.2% from the previous year, and 65,000 tonnes of shipment in copper weight increasing by 5.2%. The firm aims to improve the gap between Japanese official copper ingot price and the price indicator called “copper base” for actual electric cable prices. Shizuo Onishi, division manager of electric wire operations, said the firm hopes the users accept the copper base shift as soon as revision of Japanese official copper price, when copper price fluctuates widely in recent 2-3 years. He expected the users to adopt the shift of copper base within less than a month when the official copper price fluctuates. Yazaki has not passed increasing sub material costs on the selling price yet, while sheath material price such for vinyl chloride compound has surged due to high crude oil price. The firm will seek price hike to cover sub material cost increase.