image image

Top Message

An Accelerating Shift toward a Sustainable Society

In FY2022, there was a lockdown in China due to COVID-19 and a significant reduction in automobile production due to semiconductor shortages.
The situation in Ukraine remained tense, raw material and fuel prices rose, inflation increased worldwide, logistics were disrupted, and exchange rates fluctuated significantly.
Even in such a global situation, the market environment around Polyplastics showed a steady shift toward next-generation technologies, including those using networking facilitated by the introduction of 5G, alongside an increase in the electrification of automobiles and rising competition in the development of products for next-generation vehicles (CASE*). At the same time, many countries continued to advance their environmental policies and regulations, and corporate efforts towards environmental load reduction accelerated.
For example, the EU has proposed rules requiring all commercial packaging to be fully recyclable by 2030 and announced the decision to implement the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The environment was the major theme of the K 2022 international trade fair for plastics and rubber. Given this rapid paradigm shift toward addressing environmental concerns, we have also added an environmental element to quality, cost, delivery, and technology (QCDT). Furthermore, today, it is becoming more and more important for companies to take sustainability into account, including human rights, labor, safety, and compliance.

Aiming for a Balance between Economic and Environmental Issues

By offering an alternative to metals, our engineering plastics have enriched the quality of our customers’ lives by enabling miniaturization, lighter vehicles, and longer product service lives. This shift from metals to engineering plastics will continue into the future, with products becoming smaller, vehicles becoming lighter, and more advanced functions being added to products.
As more automobiles become electric, demand for electrical insulation for automotive parts will increase, and the use of engineering plastics with excellent insulation properties, including PBT and PPS, will increase. Heavier automotive batteries will force overall weight reduction to save electricity. As a result, metals will be replaced by engineering plastics more than ever before. In the connected world of vehicle-to-everything, the demand for LCP with a low dielectric constant will increase as telecommunications become more advanced. Engineering plastics are thus essential to the realization of an abundant society in the future.
On the other hand, the production of engineering plastics currently consumes a large amount of energy. Society has relied heavily on CO2-emitting fossil fuels as its main energy resource since the Industrial Revolution and is now at a major turning point. Most plastics are dependent on fossil fuels for their raw materials, which causes resource depletion. Furthermore, if disposed of improperly, they become a source of environmental pollution and pose a major challenge to sustainable society.
However, actions that address economic and environmental issues are not incompatible—they can coexist. As part of the Daicel Group, we have set the high goals of realizing Carbon Neutrality by 2050 and reducing GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 compared to 2018 (Polyplastics’ target is to achieve a 46% reduction per product unit compared to 2013). We consider it essential for engineering plastics to be able to contribute to a recycling-oriented society with a Circular Economy that treats waste as a resource. To overcome the industry's highest degree of difficulty, we are also committed to providing innovative solutions, including in new businesses.
In FY2023, we are launching a new Re-compounding Service that will provide customers with materials of the same quality as virgin materials by strictly managing the quality of collected raw materials. In addition, the entire Daicel Group will make the raw materials of engineering plastics sustainable (biomass, etc.) and combine chemical recycling, energy recovery, and using carbon as a raw material to build a recycling scheme for all engineering plastics. In providing such innovative solutions, we believe it is essential to utilize the technologies and products of the Daicel Group and other companies in the same industry.

Striving to Remain Our Stakeholders’ First Choice

We will continue to be a “good company” so that we remain our stakeholders’ first choice. Each of us has a different idea of what makes a company good. To hold on to our position as a leading company in this industry, the following two things are essential. One is we should be the first company that comes to mind when our customers and business partners are thinking of engineering plastics. The other one is to have our employees work with pride here. We are committed to meeting our stakeholders’ expectations for quality, safety, environment, compliance, and a comfortable work environment as well as to continuously offering value that exceeds expectations. These expectations may present a difficult challenges for realizing a sustainable society, but there is no question that engineering plastics will be indispensable materials well into the future. Therefore, we will overcome each challenge and continue to evolve going forward as a leading engineering plastics company.

sign

Takashi Miyamoto

Representative Director and President

  • *Vehicles with Connected, Autonomous/Automated, Shared, and Electric/ Electrified technologies