On Friday, March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale struck, sending shockwaves through the earth’s crust and devastating walls of water into helpless coastal towns less than ten minutes later.
Within hours, it was immediately apparent that a nuclear complex had been mortally stricken, a combination of extremely rare natural circumstances and insufficient design parameters working together to first cripple and then ruin the plants.
Dealing with its most serious crisis since WW II, Japan struggled with a loss of electrical power, loss of refined fuels and/or the ability to transport them, infrastructure damage, enormous refugee counts from stricken area, and an ever-widening exclusion zone around the Fukushima plants.
The next shockwaves were economic in nature, and these spread across the globe within days of the earthquake. But instead of the biggest shock coming first, these built over time. Japan’s industries create crucial raw, intermediate, and finished goods for numerous industrial processes. Nobody could really appreciate the complexity of the supply chains until shortage began to arise.
Fortunately, the factories that make the batteries for the iPad were spared…but not the plant that is responsible for supplying 70% of a key substance required to make the batteries:
Chemical Reaction: iPod Is Short Key Material
TOKYO—A representative from Apple Inc. recently called Kureha Corp.’s offices in the U.S. The problem: Apple was facing tight supplies of lithium-ion batteries used in its popular iPods, and they traced the supply bottleneck to the relatively obscure Japanese chemicals maker.
Kureha, which has a 70% share of the global market for a crucial polymer used in lithium-ion batteries, had to shut its factory in Iwaki—near the quake’s epicenter—after the March 11 disaster struck. It is the only place where Kureha makes this particular polymer.
Its chief executive said Japan’s natural disaster would accelerate the company’s plans to move more of its production overseas. “For a company like Kureha, this is the only way of surviving,” said Takao Iwasaki in an interview on Monday.
And this problem does not just affect Apple; it will impact many other mobile devices that use lithium polymer batteries.
How long do you think it will be before this company manages to moves its production facilities offshore?
