President's Message

The initiatives for
sustainability are
the very essence of
UBE's management.
We will strive to be
a sustainable company
that focuses on
specialty chemicals
and contributes to
the global environment.

Masato Izumihara
President & Representative Director

Our Ideals & History

The challenges and transformation we pursue today based on our founding principles are steps toward reshaping tomorrow and beyond.

Today, UBE Corporation stands at a major turning point in its long history going back to 1897, when the company was founded as a coal mining enterprise in what is now Ube City. In April 2022, we laid the groundwork for this new era by transitioning to a new group management system as a chemical business holding company, and by changing our name from Ube Industries.

However, the foundation on which our management rests remains the same. Our ideals as a company cannot be discussed without mentioning our two founding principles: "coexistence and mutual prosperity" and "from finite mining to infinite industry." In modern terms, the first principle refers to coexistence with all our stakeholders--not just our customers, partners, and employees, but also our shareholders, investors, local communities, and the global environment--while the second one expresses sustainable growth made possible by the structural transformation of our business into a model not heavily dependent on fossil fuels. These principles are the corporate DNA passed down to us and point us the direction of progress.

Guided by our founding principles, we refreshed our corporate philosophy, changing it to "Pursue technology and embrace innovation to create value for the future and contribute to social progress." And, we have defined our purpose as: "Leveraging the manufacturing technologies the UBE Group has cultivated throughout its long history, create the value required by society, in the safe and environmentally friendly method demanded by society, and deliver that value to the people. And by doing so, help to solve global environmental issues, which have become a common issue for all humankind, and contribute to people's lives and health, and an enriched future society."
To these we have added four values that we cherish: Ethics, Safety and Security, Quality, and People. Together, our philosophy, purpose, and values form our system of ideals.

In order to concretely map out the future that we aspire toward, when we formulated our current medium-term management plan started in fiscal 2022, we defined our "Vision for 2030 (Long-Term Vision)" as "a corporate group centered on specialty chemicals that contributes to the global environment, human health, and an enriched future society." Also, when we changed our company name to its current form, we adopted a tagline with the initials of the three T's: "Transform Tomorrow Today." This means that the diverse challenges and transformation we pursue now are steps for reshaping tomorrow and beyond. This is the perfect slogan for a company that has constantly taken on challenges while evolving its management system to reflect the changing times and business landscape.
Dedicating ourselves to "Transform Tomorrow Today," we will continue addressing the changes in society while proactively transforming ourselves.

How I see UBE

To transform UBE, we must have people who embrace and enjoy changes

As I noted, we are a company with a very long history. Our diverse group of talent has transformed our management system and business structure over the years by taking on many challenges without fearing change. I think that this is what makes UBE unique.
When we changed our name to UBE Corporation in April 2022, we also set ourselves on a course to transform into a business structure centered on specialty chemicals. To succeed in this endeavor, we need challenge seekers who are passionate, agile, and change-oriented, and who are eager to plot their own career paths.
While it is important for us to produce results on both the corporate and team levels, a look back at our past business expansion and growth reveals that we were able to surmount various adversities thanks to such talent with very strong character and the ability to drive the company forward with their unbridled passion and willingness to embrace change. When we take a closer look at our history, we are bound to encounter the names of individuals who were integral to the success of various transformations of our organization and businesses. Indeed, UBE could not have evolved without talent who not only embraced change but also enjoyed it as well.
In addition to seeking to recruit such talent, I will also work to implant this ideal as a model for all employees.

In order to value and nurture unique human resources, a corporate culture that tolerates challenges and positive failures is necessary. Our corporate culture can be summed up as a willingness to frankly speak our minds while also sincerely engaging with others within and outside our organization. I think that it is vital for us to have effective internal communication and openness so that we can sustain that culture and so that I can continue speaking candidly with you. I am playing my part by creating communication opportunities to directly hear your voices. Specifically, I visit our worksites and hold a dozen or so meetings each year with all levels of personnel, from senior managers to young workers.

As moving forward with our big shift toward specialty businesses, it is important for us to foster an innovative workplace environment where each member's individuality can be leveraged even more. The top-priority challenge for accomplishing this is to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. Innovation is hard to come by in a monoculture. We want to create an organization in which female employees can make the most of their abilities, and members with diverse backgrounds, including nationalities, experiences, and values, can play an active role on a global scale. This way, we can quickly detect changes and respond flexibly to the new environment.

Our outlook and actions for the future

How do we stay on top of society's rapid changes?
The answer is direction and speed.

The future is always difficult to predict, and the pace of change is accelerating. There are two key factors for succeeding in this endeavor: direction and speed.

As for the first one, the progress of the uncertain future is full of twists and turns, however, there is no mistaking the major direction in which the world is heading toward a sustainable society while addressing global environmental issues. The direction that we are currently striving to follow is to implement a growth strategy that integrates growth in specialty chemicals and contribution to the global environment.

The key drivers for this growth will be polyimides--an area of specialty chemicals where we already excel--and polyimide-based products such as separation membranes, C1 chemicals, high-performance coatings, and pharmaceuticals.
One big topic in our efforts to expand globally is our decision to invest in the construction of a plant in Louisiana in the US for manufacturing the C1 chemicals DMC and EMC. These two chemicals are essential to the lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, and the US completely depends on imports for its DMC/EMC supply (provided only by UBE and Chinese manufacturers). I believe that as a Japanese company our local production of DMC, which is also precursor for EMC, will have significant meaning for the economic security of the US, and our entry into the local supply chain is something that customers have been strongly wanting us to do.

The carbon neutrality has already been addressed in our current Medium-Term Management Plan, we have declared that we will work toward carbon neutrality in 2050 by first striving to meet these interim targets for FY2030: reducing our GHG emissions by 50% compared to FY2013, and increasing the consolidated net sales share of environmentally friendly products and technologies to at least 60%.
Given the recent global energy situation and greater public awareness of global environmental issues, there is no future for our company if we rely on our traditional basic businesses, which entail heavy energy consumption and cost-driven competition. Instead, we will shift toward the specialty chemicals business, which consumes less energy and generates strong revenue shielded from market volatility. We will focus on this segment and grow it. This path will help us to reduce our GHG emissions and move closer to carbon neutrality.

The other important factor is speed.
Since setting the current Medium-Term Management Plan into motion, we have tremendously accelerated our decision-making processes concerning growth investments in the specialty chemicals business. Also, we have been working to move up the schedule for many projects, and have greatly increased the size of our investments in Japan and overseas.
At the same time, we are pursuing digital transformation (DX) in all sorts of areas. DX is integral to our efforts to further streamline and speed up production, R&D, sales, supply chains, business management, and more. Moreover, we are seeking to leverage AI solutions that can further accelerate DX in ways that make our processes more sophisticated and provide greater value.
Through our efforts to accelerate decision-making and implement DX, we will speed up the execution of our core strategy of growing the specialty chemical segment and contributing to the global environment, and will agilely respond to the rapid changes of the times.

Contributing to a sustainable society

Actions and measures for addressing global environmental issues are sometimes perceived as constraints that can impede a company's growth. However, my view is that we should not take a passive approach to them, and instead actively incorporate them into our growth strategy.
We are tackling global environmental issues in the following three priority areas.

The first is our response to carbon neutrality.
As I mentioned, our carbon neutrality actions include setting a target of reducing our GHG emissions in FY2030 by 50%, and we will steadily work toward this goal. However, we cannot achieve such a reduction simply through low-key efforts to conserve energy and streamline production processes. Most of our emissions come from basic chemical production, so we will also use this as an avenue for reaching our target. We will restructure this segment through various reforms, including discontinuing ammonia production in 2030, while shifting to the more environmentally friendly specialty chemicals business.
Our GHG reduction targets have been certified as grounded in science by the Science Based Targets initiative.

The second is contributing to a circular economy.
To realize a circular economy, we are working to reduce the amount of plastic and other waste generated by our own operations and are developing products and recycling technologies that utilize recycled materials and biomass.
We manufacture products that use feedstock certified by ISCC PLUS as derived from recycled material. Also, we have set a goal of increasing the net sales share of environmentally friendly products and technologies (including products that contribute to a circular economy) to at least 60% by FY2030.

The third is contributing to nature positive.
Our actions here include identifying how our business operations depend on and impact nature, contributing to protection and restoration of natural environments and to sustainable use of ecosystem services, and reducing the rate of water resource consumption in all products. Moreover, we actively participate in forestation projects aimed at protecting water resources.

In addition to addressing global environmental issues, we are making various efforts to be a sustainable company and to contribute to the formation of a sustainable society.
As the core premise for these actions, we make a focused effort to advance respect for human rights. Our "UBE Group Human Rights Guideline" states, in this regard include respecting the dignity of the individual, and eliminating discrimination based on gender, nationality, disability, age, social status, and other distinctions. And we align our commitments with the United Nations Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative for building a sound global community, and its four areas of action: human rights, labor, environment, and anti-corruption. We also work to spread awareness of this initiative.

Sustainability is exactly what UBE's management aims for. We will implement a PDCA cycle after clarifying appropriate measures for sustainability issues, including the three areas of global environmental issues and respect for human rights, as well as safety, quality, compliance, and so on. And We steadily implement our strategies and measures through approaches driven by stakeholder engagement.

What I value as a business manager.

Our businesses and people grow together.

I am sometimes asked what I value as a business manager. My answer is having good communication in many ways, including dialogue with our people out in the field. Another important thing is to listen to the honest opinions of many people.
CEO is sometimes called "The last man." This means there's no one else behind me. I make the final decisions, and I bear responsibility for everything. That's why I listen carefully to various opinions and ultimately make decisions. This is the most important thing to me as a leader.

What, then, is the role of the top manager? I would say it's to foster an innovative culture and ensure the growth of the company's businesses and people.
To accomplish that, I have to make sure that the company has a work environment and businesses that provide our employees with a sense of purpose and job satisfaction. I think that workers are better motivated and find reward in what they do if they're engaged in a growing business or one that the company is focused on growing. And, if that business does in fact grow, there's more room for the employees to take on bigger roles, and they can enjoy the higher positions and benefits that come with that. In this sense, business growth has positive meaning not just for the company, but also for its people.
So, I believe that a key role of a company's leader is to nurture together the business and the people by making sure that the company engages in such growth-oriented enterprises and that diverse human resources are empowered to exercise their talents to the fullest.

To our stakeholders

We aim for the next stage without fear of change.

We are right in the middle of a process of transformation.
As the phrase "Survival of the fittest" suggests, the ones who survive competition are not those who are simply stronger or wiser, but those who successfully adapt to their changing environment. Over the years since its founding, Ube has continued to grow by turning changes in the environment into new opportunities for business expansion. We, today's successors, have inherited that DNA. I am certain that we, like how our forebears overcame the changes of the times by repeatedly transforming the company, can embrace change and confidently take on bold challenges that will lead Ube to the next level of growth.

Aspiring to realize our Long-Term Vision of becoming "a corporate group centered on specialty chemicals that contributes to the global environment, human health, and an enriched future society," we will transform our businesses with an approach aimed at achieving both specialty chemical-driven growth and contributions to the global environment.
Thank you for your generous support.