It seems that Inergy Automotive Systems (Paris / France; www.inergyautomotive.com), a joint venture of Plastic Omnium and Solvay for production of plastic fuel tank systems, has not progressed beyond the memorandum of understanding that was signed nearly a year ago to acquire the majority interest in automotive supplier Yangzhou Automotive Plastic Parts (Yapp, Yangzhou / China; www.yapp.com) – see PIE 3, 2005. Yapp also manufactures plastic fuel tanks and is regarded as the leading producer in China. The French company apparently was unable to convince the Chinese firm´s workforce of the positive aspects of the purchase, and a referendum came out negative. According to French sources, Inergy management does not regard the present situation as optimistic.

Inergy´s CEO Pierre Lecoq, nevertheless, has little doubt that an engagement in the China´s burgeoning car market is absolutely essential. He estimates that the proportion of fuel systems based on plastics in Asia will rise from the present 20% to 40% within a few years and to as much as 70% before the end of the decade. For this reason, and in order to keep up with its competitor Kautex Textron (Bonn / Germany; www.kautex.com), Inergy will presumably have to look for another candidate. Kautex recently acquired the remaining 35% of its joint venture Kautex Textron KeyLex (Hiroshima / Japan) set up in 2001 to shorten the time-to- market.

Inergy and Kautex are regarded as the two giants in the market for plastic fuel systems. Based on figures from 2003, Inergy holds a world market share of around 32% since the founding of the joint venture, followed by Kautex with 23%. Behind these two are TI Automotive and Visteon, each with more than 10%. The total market is estimated to amount to around 50m units.