TOKYO & NOVI, Mich. & DÜSSELDORF, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 31, 2024--
Asahi Kasei Corporation (Asahi Kasei) and Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (Honda) announced today that the two companies have signed a shareholders’ agreement to convert an existing Asahi Kasei subsidiary in Canada into a joint venture company. This agreement was reached as a result of continued discussions on collaboration for the production of lithium-ion battery separators in Canada based on the basic agreement the two companies announced on April 25, 2024.
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The two companies plan to convert E-Materials Canada Corporation (E-Materials), a wholly owned subsidiary of an Asahi Kasei subsidiary in Canada, into a joint venture between Asahi Kasei and Honda to be renamed Asahi Kasei Honda Battery Separator Corporation (tentative name). This will be based on Honda Canada Inc., a Honda subsidiary in Canada, acquiring a 25% stake by subscribing to new shares to be issued by E-Materials through a third-party allotment. Honda will invest a total of approximately C$417 million (approximately US$300 million) combining the subscription of new shares and other investment in this joint venture. The two companies will combine each other’s strengths, such as high value-added material technologies and electrification technologies, to produce high-quality separators to be utilized for lithium-ion batteries that will accelerate the realization of high-performance electrified vehicles.
The two companies plan to establish and start the operation of the joint venture company in early 2025, subject to obtaining permits and approvals from relevant authorities.
“At the beginning of October we launched Asahi Kasei Battery Separator as a new company for the Hipore™ separator business to achieve more nimble management for this essential component of lithium-ion batteries. I am confident that we can continue to leverage the technology and experience gained with Hipore™ as well as our global network and diverse personnel to realize innovations in batteries for the future of energy storage. As Honda strives toward the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, it is building a comprehensive electric vehicle value chain in Canada, where it has a history of conducting business for more than 50 years. Our partnership will not only establish stable supply of separators in North America, together we will enhance battery performance and durability to advance the energy transition through electric vehicles, making an important contribution to sustainability.”
About Asahi Kasei
The Asahi Kasei Group contributes to life and living for people around the world. Since its foundation in 1922 with ammonia and cellulose fiber business, Asahi Kasei has consistently grown through the proactive transformation of its business portfolio to meet the evolving needs of every age. With more than 49,000 employees worldwide, the company contributes to sustainable society by providing solutions to the world’s challenges through its three business sectors of Material, Homes, and Health Care. For more information, visit www.asahi-kasei.com.
Asahi Kasei is also dedicated to sustainability initiatives and is contributing to reaching a carbon neutral society by 2050. To learn more, visit https://www.asahi-kasei.com/sustainability/.
Configuration for separator production in North America (Graphic: Business Wire)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Rocket barrages from Lebanon into northern Israel killed four foreign workers and three Israelis on Thursday, Israeli medics said, the deadliest cross-border strikes in Israel since it invaded Lebanon. Israel kept up airstrikes it says targeted Hezbollah militants across Lebanon, where health authorities on Thursday reported 24 people killed.
U.S. diplomats were in the region pushing for cease-fires in both Lebanon and Gaza, hoping to wind down the wars in the Middle East as the Biden administration enters its final months. Pressure has been building ahead of the U.S. election next week.
In northern Gaza, Israeli forces struck one of the last functioning hospitals, destroying much-needed supplies that the World Heath Organization had delivered to the facility, the U.N. agency said. The strikes set off a fire that affected the dialysis unit, destroyed water tanks, damaged the surgery building and injured four medics trying to extinguish the blaze, said the hospital's director, Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment about a strike on the hospital, which it stormed last week after alleging it was harboring Hamas militants. Gaza's Health Ministry on Thursday condemned Israeli attacks on the hospital and called on the international community to safeguard medical facilities in Gaza.
Projectiles from Lebanon crashed into an agricultural area in Metula, Israel’s northernmost town, killing four Thai workers and an Israeli farmer, officials said.
Hours later, the Israeli military reported another volley of some 25 rockets from Lebanon, striking an olive grove in a suburb of the northern Israeli port city of Haifa. That strike killed a 30-year-old man and 60-year-old woman while wounding two others, said Magen David Adom, Israel’s main emergency medical organization.
Both Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran, Israel’s regional adversary. Hezbollah did not immediately claim responsibility for Thursday’s rocket fire. Israel’s military said 90 projectiles were fired from Lebanon on Thursday.
Hezbollah has been firing thousands of rockets, drones and missiles into Israel — and drawing fierce Israeli retaliatory strikes — since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack out of the Gaza Strip triggered Israel’s devastating war in the Palestinian enclave.
The residents of Metula evacuated in October 2023, and only security officials and agricultural workers remain.
In addition to the four Thais killed, another Thai agricultural worker was injured by the rocket fire, Thailand’s Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said in social media posts Friday. Maris urged all parties to return to the path of peace in the name of the civilians harmed by the continuing conflict.
The Hotline for Refugees and Migrants, an Israeli organization that advocates for foreign workers, said authorities had put them in danger by allowing them to work along the border without proper protection.
Agricultural areas near Israel’s border are closed military zones that can only be entered with official permission. For the few remaining residents, the thump of interceptions by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and wailing air raid sirens punctuate daily life.
Nonetheless, local officials largely support continuing a ground operation in southern Lebanon.
“If the Israeli government accedes to an agreement brought by (the Biden administration) ... we will not have it because for us this is rehabilitating Hezbollah again on our borders,” said Eitan Davidi, the mayor of the northern town of Margaliot.
Israeli strikes killed 24 people in Lebanon on Thursday, among them 13 people in the country’s eastern Bekaa Valley, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News agency, a day after the Israel’s military warned residents there to evacuate.
The warnings sent thousands of people fleeing and spread panic across the city known for its colossal Roman ruins.
The Lebanese Health Ministry reported that over the last 24 hours, Israeli bombardments killed 45 people and wounded 110 in various parts of the country.
Jean Fakhry, a local official in the Deir al-Ahmar region in the Bekaa Valley, said Israeli airstrikes pummeling the area turned the main highway “a parking lot” of fleeing cars stuck in traffic.
Around 12,000 displaced people are staying in the area, he said, with most taking refuge in private homes. At one of the shelters in Deir al-Ahmar, families with luggage were still arriving Thursday.
“Our homes were destroyed,” said Zahraa Younis, from the village near Baalbek. “We came with nothing — no clothes or anything else.”
Senior White House aides Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein were in Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and senior officials about the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah.
The meetings focused on efforts to secure a cease-fire deal in Lebanon and to assess new proposals floated by mediators to free Israeli hostages being held in Gaza, according to a U.S. official familiar with planning for the talks who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The meetings were attended by Netanyahu as well as Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister; David Barnea, the director of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency; and other officials.
But with the U.S. election on Tuesday, hopes for immediate progress appeared remote — particularly in Gaza where Israel has come under criticism for not letting more humanitarian aid into the besieged north.
The death toll from more than a year of war in Gaza passed 43,000 earlier this week, Palestinian health officials reported.
The Awda Hospital in central Gaza said late Thursday it had received 16 bodies of people killed by Israeli bombardment of two houses in Nuseirat refugee camp. The hospital said more than 30 others, including a medic and two journalists, were wounded.
Over the past year, the broadening Israeli campaign in Lebanon against Hezbollah has killed 2,865 people there, wounded over 13,000 and devastated Lebanese towns near the border.
Some 1.2 million people in Lebanon have been displaced since Israel escalated the conflict into a full-blown war last month, when it launched a wave of heavy airstrikes that killed Hezbollah’s top leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and most of his deputies.
A year of Hezbollah rocket attacks have also forced 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from near the border.
Frankel reported from Jerusalem and Tawil from Deir al-Ahmar, Lebanon. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington and Eleanor H. Reich in New York contributed to this report.
Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Flame and smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Flame and smoke rise from Israeli airstrikes on Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, early Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, center, Abdulaziz Abu al-Samen, 21, right and Ahmad Fahmawi, 19, in the morgue of a local hospital, as the Palestinian Health Ministry said two Palestinians were killed in an Israeli strike and a third by Israeli gunfire, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Relatives of Palestinian Husam Mallah, 28, take the last look at his body in the morgue of a local hospital, in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, sit at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, study inside at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with her family amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, walks at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, holds her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced people, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel, take shelter inside a church sanctuary, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A displaced woman, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, changes the diaper of her daughter at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, play at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, listen to a story at a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced children, who fled Baalbek city and the nearby towns of Douris and Ain Bourday with their families amid the ongoing Hezbollah-Israel war, are reflected in a mirror inside a school being used as a shelter, in Deir Al-Ahmar, east Lebanon, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Rescue workers use excavators to remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike, as they search for victims in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
A civil defence worker searches for victims in the rubble of a destroyed building hit in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday night, in Sarafand, southern Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Emergency workers carry the body of a victim found in the rubble of a destroyed building hit Tuesday night in an Israeli airstrike in Sarafand, south Lebanon, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
