The Locational Behaviors in the Complete Feed Industry
1971 Volume 23 Issue 2 Pages 59-67
Details
1971 Volume 23 Issue 2 Pages 59-67
The locational behaviors in the complete feed industry are, in general, based on the following two principles.
The first is to build the main plants in the leading port-areas. That is because the cost of raw materials is so high as to occupy 87% of the total, and moreover most of the raw materials are imported from abroad. In reality, their main plants are located in the four leading port-areas, where 85% of imported raw materials are unloaded (Fig. 2 Table 2).
The second is to build the plants at the optimum locations to hold the market. This principle became more important since 1960, when the comeptition for the share in the complete-feed market grew keener, and the holding of the market became more urgent as an indispensable condition for the maintenance of the plants. Consequently, many plants have come to be built not only in the above-mentioned leading port-areas but also in the tecal port-areas (Fig. 2 Table 1).
However, we should notice that the firms of this industry are to be divided into two groups by their nature: National Purchasing Federation of Agricultural Co-operation Association (Abbrev. ZENKOREN) and the others. To the latter, the first and the second principles are well applied, but to the former, another principle is to be applied. This is to locate the plants at the optimum places for the benefits of users. It means that ZENKOREN, as an association of users, should consider their benefits with the first priority at the cost of some pecuniary losses on the side of the association. That is why, each member of ZENKOREN -Prefectural Economic Federations of Agricultural Cooperation- is allowed to locate its own plant at the optimum place in its local market and ZENKOREN is obliged to approve this inevitable losses on the side of the association (Fig. 1 Table 1).
In short, the last principle is to be applied specially to the members of ZENKOREN in addition to the first, and the second principles, while only the first and the second ones are applied to the rest. This difference between the two, is precisely the result of the characteristics of ZENKOREN, as the associaton of users; and thus its characteristics form its own plant-system, peculiar to this association.
