“The annual press conference was held by Japan Industrial and Medical Gases Association (JIMGA) on November 28 to report on the status of recent activities conducted by the association as well as on issues from now on. At the press conference, Chairman Masahiro Toyoda and other directors reported on the status of recent and future activities on the Industrial Gas and Medical Gas Departments, along with measures to cope with the hike in electric power fees.

They reported on the measures to cope with the hike in electric power fees to be implemented in the spring. The industrial gas industry uses 9 billion kWh a year. As for the amount of electrical power used per unit of sales, larger amount was used in industrial gas industry than the amount in the electric furnace industry. This industry uses by far the largest amount of electrical power, some 30 times greater than the average for the entire manufacturing industry. Taking this into consideration, it was predicted that the industry overall would experience an increase in costs of about 6 billion due to the current hike in fees by Tokyo Electric Power. The range of the increase was up to 2.51 yen per kW but in the end result the rate was set at 2.25 yen per kW. As a result this meant a burden of 5.5 billion yen per annum for the industry, with the burden reduced by about 500 million yen.

Still, during the latter half of November, other electric power companies also announced hikes in electricity fees similar to that of Tokyo Electric Power.”