Tokyo—The Yokohama Rubber Co., Ltd., today announced that its Taiwanese affiliate company, SC Kingflex Corporation had obtained an ISO9001 certificate in March this year. The ISO9001 is an international quality standard for a company's whole operation process encompassing from development, design, production and distribution to sales. In March last year, SC Kingflex Corporation started building a quality control system with its level meeting the requirements of the standard and finally obtained the certificate from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) this time. In August last year, the company also obtained a certificate for the ISO14001, an international standard for environmental management systems.

Yokohama Rubber has 49 percent shares in SC Kingflex Corporation that designs, develops and manufactures low- and high-pressure hoses and carbon master batch, a raw material for rubber, and assembles and market hoses and metal fittings, by using technologies licensed from Yokohama Rubber. All of these products are being sold in Taiwan and other Asian countries. In addition, the company is an exporter of hoses for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to the United States.

SC Kingflex Corporation is headquartered in Jungli City, Taoyuan Hsien. Mr. Tomoo Kitamura from Yokohama Rubber is acting as the president. Capitalized at 244 million Yuan, SC Kingflex Corporation recorded sales of 315 million Yuan in 2001. Its factories are located in Miaoli and Jungli in Taiwan and the company employs a total of 96 people as of the end of April 2002.

Yokohama Rubber has been making group-wide efforts to obtain the certificate for the ISO9000 series of standards. The efforts have even involved affiliated companies in Japan and overseas operation bases. In Japan, the Tire Group obtained a certificate for the ISO9001 in August 1995 and all of its tire plants (Shinshiro, Onomichi, Mishima and Mie) were approved as certified operations by February 1996. In overseas, Yokohama Rubber Philippines, Inc., a radial tire production base, obtained a certificate for the ISO9002 in March 1999, while Yokohama Tire Corporation in the United States received a certificate for the ISO9001 for its plant in Salem, Virginia, in November 1999.