President’s Message

The origins of our company date back to the establishment of Ogaki Denki Yakin Kogyosho in 1925. It was subsequently restructured as Nippon Denki Yakin and in 1963 merged with Toho Denka to form Nippon Denko. In July 2014, following a business merger with Chuo Denki Kogyo, the company changed its Japanese name to “Shin (New) Nippon Denko” — although the English name remained unchanged. In January 2018, Chuo Denki Kogyo became a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Denko.

Since the time it was founded, our company’s factories around Japan have handled the production of various ferroalloys such as silicone, chromium, and manganese ferroalloys, but the high cost of electricity and the strengthening of the yen inevitably led us to withdraw from the domestic manufacturing of products where our competitiveness was declining, and we therefore are currently focused on the production of manganese ferroalloy. At the same time, we have steadily been developing our environmental systems and functional materials businesses, which are areas that are less affected by market conditions and where we expect to see stable earnings.

Our company’s strength is that, in the primary core business of ferroalloys, as a result of our prioritizing the injection of business resources into high carbon ferromanganese and pursuing maximum cost reductions, we have maintained superior international competitiveness while simultaneously meeting the highest levels demanded for international environmental standards. Also, Japan is the world’s second largest producer of steel, and there are many outstanding and extremely stable domestic users of our products, including Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal as well as blast furnace manufacturers, electric furnace manufacturers, special steel manufacturers, and others.

Moreover, in the long term, the global demand for steel is rising, and in particular we believe that we will see an increase in the consumption of manganese products, which are essential to the production of high-performance steel materials. Moreover, thanks to our long history of achievements in the ferroalloy business, our company is enjoying an extremely positive and robust financial position.

As the domestic and international environment surrounding our company’s business undergoes rapid and dramatic changes, our management principle remains constant: “To develop and provide products, technologies, and services that differentiate us from other companies, boost corporate value, and contribute to the creation of a prosperous society.” Based on that principle, we will work to maximize our company’s strengths, use our management resources to their fullest, and resolutely strive to resolve the challenges facing our business.

Under Nippon Denko’s 6th Medium Term Business Plan (2015–2017), we achieved our objective of “restructuring our business portfolio through selection and concentration,” pursuing 4 core businesses through the addition of two new areas—the “environmental systems business,” which responds to the needs of a recycling society, and the “electric power business,” which operates hydraulic power plants using the Feed-in-Tariff Scheme for Renewable Energy—to our existing “ferroalloy business” and “functional materials business.” Under the 7th Medium Term Business Plan (2018–2020) that began this year, our entire corporate group will work together as one and dedicate our efforts to further improving the value of our firm based on the following basic policy.

To all of our stakeholders—our customers and partners, our shareholders, and others—we hope that you will continue to offer us your understanding and support.