
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of Japan began inspecting Kobe Steel’s Mie aluminium plant in central Japan on Monday amid controversies that the aluminium maker had falsified product data at many plants. The Daian aluminium plant in Mie Prefecture produced aluminium used in passenger planes manufactured by Mitsubishi Regional Jet.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. has confirmed that they have found no safety issues with the aluminium they bought from Kobe Steel for their aircrafts, and that they will continue with their development plans as scheduled.
Yet, the transport ministry intends to conduct further investigations across the industries which used Kobe Steel’s aluminium. The industries cover automobiles, shinkansen trains, commercial planes and spacecraft.
At the Daian plant, the ministry will examine the quality control system and find out where else such falsification of data occurred. There are reports of Kobe Steel producing fabricated aluminium product data at its plants in Tochigi and Yamaguchi prefectures.
Outside Japan, General Motors Co., Ford Motor Co., Airbus and Boeing Co. are also reportedly investigating whether they used any suspect materials from the Japanese steelmaker.
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