Global supply chains are facing new challenges: increasing complexity and dynamic markets require greater transparency and collaboration. Given these circumstances, Catena-X was launched in 2021 to connect companies worldwide and strengthen the resilience of the industry. This made it clear that digitalization is the key to making value creation more stable and efficient in the future.
From vision to networked reality in just a few years: Catena-X is now a key part of the automotive industry’s digital transformation. This open, collaborative data ecosystem enables secure, standardized data exchange between manufacturers, suppliers and partners. Companies always retain data sovereignty. In this way, a connected ecosystem has gradually emerged, continuously evolving from within the industry.
The BMW Group is one of the co-initiators and, together with its partners, has been promoting the networking of the industry since 2021. The goal is to create a resilient and efficient supply chain that can respond flexibly to market changes and help companies meet regulatory requirements. The concrete benefits of the open data approach are already evident. Examining how it is being used in practice reveals the areas in which it is already being applied.
Breakthrough gasification pilot project proves recyclability of diaper waste and other absorbent hygiene products
Post-consumer diaper waste turned into raw material for new chemical products, keeping carbon in the loop
Potential for reducing municipal waste and creating circular products
Ludwigshafen, Germany – December 11, 2025 – BASF, one of the world’s leading chemical companies and manufacturer of superabsorbent polymers (SAP), and Essity, a global leading hygiene and health company, joined forces together with the Technical University of Wien to revolutionize recycling of absorbent hygiene products (AHP).
The groundbreaking gasification pilot project proves that used diapers and other absorbent hygiene products can be transformed into valuable raw materials for new chemical products – no complex pre-treatment required. The resulting gas mixture contains carbon monoxide and hydrogen, which can be used as feedstock in chemical production, keeping carbon in the loop.
BASF and TU Wien’s innovative gasification technology enabled this result. Gasification is a process that converts solids like waste into gas at high temperatures above 600 °C. Thanks to this process, diaper waste is sanitized and converted into high-quality feedstock, matching the standards of virgin resources.
This breakthrough not only tackles a major waste stream but also unlocks possibilities for circularity in the chemical and hygiene sectors. This scalable solution has the potential to reshape municipal waste management, helps our customers achieve ambitious sustainability goals and offers a solution to diaper waste.
BASF’s unique production network enables the use of recycled feedstocks, offering customers products that are both sustainable and high-performing.
“Our customers can rely on BASF as their trusted partner for innovative recycling solutions. We demonstrated the potential of recycling post-consumer absorbent hygiene products. BASF is committed to turning challenges into opportunities and leading the way towards a more sustainable future—together with our customers,” says Oliver Cullmann, Vice President Global Marketing & Strategy C3 Value Chain.
The recent FOMC meetings share a theme: rates are converging toward what appears to be a landing zone on several fronts, even if only temporarily. The balance sheet is now on freeze (there is a floor set for bank reserves), and the funds rate is now close to where it is looking more normal, or at least close to it. Let’s delve into both.
First, the level of the funds rate and floating rates in general. The 3mth SOFR rate is finally below the 10yr SOFR rate (just this week). Which means, at long last, it’s cheaper to fund floating than to fund fixed. This is with the 10yr SOFR having been under rising pressure in the past weeks, but also as the 3mth SOFR has been tamed by the rate-cutting narrative. It’s the first time since the second half of 2022 (and briefly in January 2025) that the 10yr SOFR rate has been above most floating rates, and that will be copper-fastened as soon as the Fed cuts by 25bp in a bit. For players who have baulked at the idea of swapping to floating on account of negative impact carry, that has now gone away (at least for as long as 10yr SOFR remains elevated).
Second, liquidity conditions. Repo has been trending tight in the past few months, and things reached a point of no return when the effective funds rate began to de-anchor and trek towards the rate on excess reserves (now just 1bp below). The Fed reacted at the previous FOMC meeting by reverse engineering this into a rationale for freezing the balance sheet, where further MBS roll-offs would be matched by T-bills buying. But as we’ve noted, the Fed will ultimately have to re-expand the balance sheet at the same pace as the nominal economy is growing. So, if nominal GDP is growing at 3-5%, bank reserves too should expand at that rate. The Fed has reacted to this reality by implementing flexibility to buy T-bills in excess of the MBS roll-off, to ensure ample reserves.
Reserve management purchases is the term the Fed is using to describe its T-bill buying agenda, as in fact they can go out as far as three years in Treasuries if needed. That’s quite deviant from a pure T- bills buying programme, and bordering in fact on QE. They’ll start with $40bn of buying, and suggest it will wane in later months due to seasonal liquidity circumstances. Good for the front end!
In order, to keep providing you with our global services, Maersk is revising the Peak Season Surcharge (PSS) for United Arab Emirates, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bhutan, India, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Nepal, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen to USA and Canada west Coast effective from 10th Dec 2025 till 31st Dec 2025 for below mentioned containers.
The revised tariff levels are as follows:
The above rates are also subject to other applicable surcharges, including local charges and contingency charges.
These rates are unaffected by, and do not affect, any tariff notified, published, or filed in accordance with local regulatory requirements.
For trades subject to the US Shipping Act or the China Maritime Regulations, quotations or surcharges that vary from the Maersk tariff shall not be binding on Maersk unless included in a service contract or service contract amendment that has been filed with the Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) or the Shanghai Shipping Exchange, as applicable.
We appreciate your business and look forward to continuing working with you in the future.
NEW YORK — Time magazine is set to name its person of the year for 2025 on Thursday.
Among those in the running according to prediction markets is artificial intelligence itself, along with tech CEOs Jensen Huang of Nvidia and Sam Altman of OpenAI. Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope whose election this year followed the death of Pope Francis, is also considered a contender, with President Donald Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani topping lists as well.
Trump was named the 2024 person of the year by the magazine after his winning his second bid for the White House, succeeding Taylor Swift, who was the 2023 person of the year.
The magazine’s selection dates from 1927, when its editors have picked the person they say most shaped headlines over the previous 12 months.
Rolls-Royce is one of the first engine manufacturer to verify and publish the environmental footprint of emergency power generators
The entire life cycle of the systems is taken into account – from raw material extraction to end of life
mtu gensets can be operated with sustainable fuels, reducing CO2 emissions by up to 90%
Rolls-Royce has delivered mtu emergency power generators with verified environmental product declarations (EPDs) to a European data center operator for the first time. The company is setting a new standard for transparency and sustainability in the supply of energy to critical infrastructure.
In collaboration with sustainability expert Sphera, Rolls-Royce is one of the first engine manufacturers to develop externally verified EPDs for emergency power generators and publish them in the international EPD system (Environdec). The reports document the entire environmental life cycle of the mtu 16V 4000 DS2500 and 10V 1600 systems – from raw material extraction to production and use, to end-of-life recycling.
“With these environmental product declarations, we set a new industry standard for environmental transparency in the field of energy systems,” said Tobias Ostermaier, President Stationary Power Solutions at Rolls-Royce’s Power Systems division. “This is our response to growing demand from our customers, and we are actively supporting them in reducing their carbon footprint.”
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Hello from Yifan in Silicon Valley, your #techAsia host this week.
I had to leave warm sunny California for cold snowy New York last week to moderate a panel. It has been a while since I experienced New York in winter after relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area to cover technology for Nikkei Asia from NYC.
The trip was a reminder of how great that decision was. In addition to being the centre of the AI revolution, the Bay Area is blessed with mild winter weather that rarely drops below 10C during the day.
But the panel discussion at the Asia Society was worth suffering a New York winter again. The panellists shared some great insights often missed in the discussions here in the US, such as how Southeast Asian countries fit into the global AI race.
At the end of the night, one attendee asked a question that stuck with me: What is the end game of AI?
As we approach the conclusion of 2025, many are trying to create a scoreboard of which countries led the AI race, which companies made the most money from AI (Nvidia, obviously) or which large language models show the most potential. But at the end of the day, what does all that mean to everyday people?
At Nikkei Asia, we’re trying to figure out the answer to that question through our series on how AI is reshaping jobs, supply chains, the environment, education and society at large — and where most of us fit into this fast-moving future.
If you’re curious about the answer like I am, follow Nikkei Asia for our ongoing, deeply reported coverage across the region.
Stop blaming AI for job cuts
You might think jobs typically outsourced to Asia — low skill, low pay and easy to standardise — would be the first to be replaced by AI. After all, Silicon Valley has laid off over a hundred thousand tech workers this year, so why wouldn’t the same thing happen overseas?
The reality is quite different, Nikkei Asia’s Sayan Chakraborty and Yifan Yu report. In many parts of Asia, work tied to training, testing and deploying AI systems is expanding rapidly, meaning that artificial intelligence is actually a boon for job markets in countries like India and the Philippines.
But that raises the inevitable question: How long will this last?
Asia’s boom in AI jobs also comes amid scepticism about how capable the technology really is. Jokes about how AI really stands for “actually Indians” have gone viral on social media platforms like Reddit and Blind, while start-ups Builder.ai and Nate, both collapsed amid claims of “AI washing”.
Beijing’s seal of approval
China has put domestic artificial intelligence chips on its official procurement list for the first time, ahead of Donald Trump’s decision to allow Nvidia’s cutting-edge semiconductors to be sold in the country, writes the Financial Times’ Zijing Wu.
AI processors made by Huawei and Cambricon have been added to a government-approved list of suppliers, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The step is designed to encourage the use of Chinese-made chips by public sector groups and could be worth billions in sales to local chipmakers.
Beijing’s move came before the US president announced he would lift export controls to allow Nvidia to ship its advanced H200 chips to ‘approved customers in China’.
However, putting locally made AI chips on to the Information Technology Innovation List — known as Xinchuang in Chinese — is seen as part of Beijing’s determination to wean the country away from US-made hardware.
The rise of humanoids
Goldman Sachs and BofA Global Research estimate that shipments of humanoid robots will reach about 18,000 to 20,000 units in 2025. The figure for 2024 was only about 3,000, meaning any manufacturer capable of producing even a few thousand of the products is already making a meaningful impact on the market.
Chinese companies are taking the lead in this nascent industry, racing to produce humanoid robots for fields ranging from entertainment to retail to smart manufacturing, even as technical hurdles and price issues remain to be conquered, Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang writes.
Shanghai-based robot maker AgiBot, backed by Chinese tech giants Tencent, BYD and Baidu, said on Monday it has reached a milestone of producing 5,000 humanoid robots at its flagship factory since it was founded in 2023. The figure places the start-up among the world’s biggest producers of such products by shipments.
Nuclear is hot
Japanese start-up Helical Fusion has signed an energy deal with a supermarket chain, in a first for Japanese nuclear technology that aims to replicate the power of the sun, Nikkei Asia’s Shotaro Tani reports.
The deal with Aoki Super marks the first power purchase agreement (PPA) signed by a Japanese fusion start-up and comes as the government signals further support for the industry amid increasing international competition to commercialise the technology.
As energy demand spiked globally amid AI data centre build-outs, nuclear energy has attracted attention from private companies and governments alike.
Case in point: Japan’s Hokkaido Electric Power is on track to restart a reactor at its Tomari nuclear plant, a move expected to boost the northern region’s appeal to industry much as the southern island of Kyushu has attracted chipmakers and data centres with cheap energy, writes Nikkei’s Masatoshi Ida.
Suggested reads
Australia’s world-first social media ban for children kicks in (Nikkei Asia)
China set to limit access to Nvidia’s H200 chips despite Trump export approval (FT)
Indian ecommerce platform Meesho rises 46.4% in trading debut (Nikkei Asia)
Kai-Fu Lee: China’s open-source AI is a national advantage (FT)
Japan’s Kioxia to make next-gen memory chips for AI data centres in 2026 (Nikkei Asia)
SK Hynix eyes US listing as AI chips demand more investment (Nikkei Asia)
Airwallex plots Silicon Valley expansion after securing $8bn valuation (FT)
Chinese chipmaker Hygon calls off merger with top shareholder (Nikkei Asia)
Chinese phonemakers seize on Apple’s AI struggles (FT)
Chinese challenger to Nvidia surges 425% in market debut (FT)
#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with assistance from the FT tech desk in London.
Sign up here at Nikkei Asia to receive #techAsia each week. The editorial team can be reached at techasia@nex.nikkei.co.jp
CDP’s assessment recognizes our unwavering commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, preserving water resources, mitigating flood risks, and responsibly managing wastewater to minimize the release of antimicrobials into the environment as part of our comprehensive AMR initiatives. We are honored that our continuous efforts have been highly esteemed.
Moving forward, the SHIONOGI Group remains dedicated to advancing and expanding sustainability initiatives in line with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We will continue to ensure that our corporate growth aligns with our contribution to creating a sustainable society through our business practices. We are aiming to evolve into a company that brings value to all our stakeholders, as we persistently strive for growth and progress.
About CDP
CDP is a global non-profit that runs the world’s only independent environmental disclosure system. As the founder of environmental reporting, we believe in transparency and the power of data to drive change. Partnering with leaders in enterprise, capital, policy and science, we surface the information needed to enable Earth-positive decisions. We helped more than 24,800 companies and almost 1,000 cities, states and regions disclose their environmental impacts in 2024. Financial institutions with more than a quarter of the world’s institutional assets use CDP data to help inform investment and lending decisions. Aligned with the ISSB’s climate standard, IFRS S2, as its foundational baseline, CDP integrates best practice reporting standards and frameworks in one place. Our team is truly global, united by our shared desire to build a world where people, planet and profit are truly balanced.
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References:
1. SHIONOGI Group Heritage (The Company Policy of SHIONOGI) and the SHIONOGI Group Code of Conduct
5. Attractive workplace | Society | Shionogi & Co., Ltd.
Forward-Looking Statements
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