Water Treatment
In fiscal 2018, Tosoh subsidiary Organo plans to bolster its earnings capacity, develop and improve technologies and products that strengthen its businesses, and allocate resources to bolster its R&D activities. Its efforts to generate long-term growth will center on such specific areas as functional products, semiconductor processing, and the separation and purification of nonaqueous solvents and gas.
Organo’s management expects sales and operating income to increase, reflecting Organo’s progress in expanding its sales of functional products and improving its profitability. The subsidiary’s management also anticipates increased capital investment to improve and further differentiate technologies and products and to carve out new business areas for medium- and long-term sustainable growth.
Organo intends to enhance its operations in Asia and to extend its services to new regions and business areas. The latter include semiconductor manufacturing processes, energy and natural resources, and life sciences.
Organo’s expansion into semiconductor manufacturing sees it developing etching, stripping, and cleaning solutions as part of the chemical purification process in wastewater treatment. This positions Organo between the chemical manufacturer and chemical purifier in the semiconductor manufacturing process.
In energy and natural resources, Organo looks to develop its purification of electrolytic solutions and separation and recycling of rare metals. Its N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) production is expected to grow 10% annually.
Life science needs are growing simultaneous with aging and increasingly health-conscious societies. And Organo will respond with its development of functional materials for diverse applications.
Large electronics industry projects should again contribute most to Organo’s performance. Its domestic and overseas orders from that industry will probably decline in fiscal 2018, but it foresees an increase in sales of plants in China. Organo will also target sales to the water treatment chemicals industry and reinforce its solutions business while continuing to reduce costs to improve profitability.
A mature domestic market, however, compels Organo to increasingly look abroad for business, especially in water treatment for power stations. Organo is thus leveraging its network of subsidiaries and affiliates in China, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Indonesia and converting its overseas activities to local operations and staffing as appropriate.
Construction
Tohoku Denki Tekko is constantly seeking new business. To that end, the subsidiary is pushing beyond hardware to planning, construction and installation as part of its continued efforts to adopt a solution-oriented sales approach for its industrial electrical machinery businesses.