UBE Corporation (President: Masato Izumihara) announced today that it has decided to build an additional plant for high-purity nitric acid at the Ube Chemical Factory (Ube City, Yamaguchi Prefecture) in order to meet further increase in demand in the future. The new plant will start trial operations in February 2024, and the production capacity is planned to be increased by 50% from the current level.

In recent years, the market for high-purity nitric acid, which is used for semiconductor cleaning and in the etching process, has been experiencing continuous growth. Since the start of production in 1986, UBE Corporation has gradually reinforced its production capacity in response to the expansion of the semiconductor market in Japan and has gained a high market share. In anticipation of continuing remarkable progress in information and communication technology and resulting strong demand for semiconductors, the Company has decided to implement this plant expansion.

In its medium-term management plan "UBE Vision 2030 Transformation--1st Stage" announced in May, UBE Corporation has set a policy of focusing its investment of management resources on specialty businesses while strengthening the profitability of its basic businesses. As for industrial chemicals, the Company aims to grow the business by optimizing the nitric acid chain toward 2030 with a view to further enhancing the production capacity of high-purity nitric acid.