Skf Targets Japan With New Bearing

SKF of Sweden, the worlds biggest maker of industrial rolling bearings, is aiming to boost its share of the Japanese market with the launch of a new type of bearing.

The Carb, or compact aligning roller bearing, is being promoted by the company as the most important innovation in the industry for 40 years. The Carb is claimed to enable industrial machines to run 15 per cent more quickly than conventional systems.

This would boost factory efficiency significantly, as well as allowing cars to travel further for the same amount of fuel as a result of smoother running gearboxes.

SKF thinks its Carb system should appeal in particular to machinery users in Japan, where it has just 1 per cent of the bearings market compared with a third share in Europe. Rolling or anti-friction bearings are the workhorses of industry. About 10 billion are turned out every year, for incorporation in just about every machine that uses rotary action.

 

Financial Times

The average car contains about 100 bearings, which typically comprise a pair of steel rings separated either by balls or rollers to permit smooth circular motion.

The Carb, which is just entering full-scale production in SKF plants, is based on specially shaped rollers and other parts which can move against each other in a forgiving manner, easing in and out of alignment without grinding to a halt.

As a result, the bearings can handle heavy loads in difficult conditions such as a high degree of vibration. SKF is talking to large Japanese industrial companies, including automotive components company Denso (formerly Nippondenso) and the machinery arms of Sumitomo and Mitsubishi, about incorporating Carb systems into their products.

Peter Augustsson, SKFs chief executive, said that a priority for the company was to increase its market position in Japan , which accounts for roughly a fifth of world sales totalling $20 billion a year.

NSK and NTN, the two Japanese companies which are second and third to the Swedish company in the world bearing business, between them account for roughly 60 per cent of annual sales in Japan.

Augustsson believed that by the end of next year Carb was likely to account for about 1 per cent of the The Carb is claimed to boost speed of machinery companys sales of Skr33 billion ($4.3 billion) a year, but expected this to grow by early next century to over 10 per cent.

SKF was involved in hundreds of development projects involving Carb, he added.

We are talking to lots of people but we dont know how big the market could eventually be. One steel-casting machine in which SKF had installed the device had been working flat-out for eight months without replacement. Under normal circumstances, bearings would have had to be replaced every two months. The Carb has already been tried out extensively in paper-making machinery, making possible speeds more than 10 per cent higher than normal. Carmakers are also interested in incorporating them in gearboxes.

SKF believes the ultimate market for the Carb could be vast, given that the world contains an estimated 100 billion bearings and all will ultimately need replacing.