Kamataro Kobayashi, the founder of the Toyo Ink Group, first began ink kneading and supplying and selling inks and varnishes in 1896. In January 1907, he went on to establish Toyo Ink Manufacturing Co. Ltd. with a workforce of 32 employees. A century later, the company celebrated its hundredth anniversary in January 2007, by which time it had a global workforce consisting of roughly 6,800 employees. Taking the company’s centenary as something of a milestone, we have prepared a new long-term corporate vision that looks to take on fresh challenges in new fields over the next hundred years. Starting in fiscal 2008, this new vision, SCC2017 (Specialty Chemical maker Challenge), sets out the target of evolving into “a globally useful specialty chemical manufacturer” over the nine year period between now and the end of fiscal 2016. With SCC positioned at the heart of the Toyo Ink Group’s business strategy, we continue to carry out our corporate activities based on Group Chain Management.
This fundamental policy is encapsulated in the Toyo Ink Group’s Corporate Policy of “aiming to create new values for human culture throughout the world.”

The Toyo Ink Group’s corporate activities play a part in each of our everyday lives, either directly or indirectly. Focusing first and foremost on the way in which our corporate activities relate to people’s lives and the way in which they should relate to people’s lives, we have made it our primary goal to help enrich and culturally enhance the lives of people the world over and create new values as part of people’s lives in the future. We aim to achieve this by working in partnership with local communities and ensuring safe operations, eliminating pollution, providing safe products and keeping people healthy and by providing the very latest in technology and superior quality, whilst ensuring that each of our employees is aware of their role as a member of the local community. We have therefore set out a Corporate Policy outlining the three key goals that underpin all of our corporate activities.
To mold the Toyo Ink Group into the sort of company that will be desirable in the future, we believe that we have a responsibility to take on board the perspectives of our employees and their families, our shareholders and other stakeholders and society as a whole. In an effort to fulfill this responsibility, we have drawn up a set of Guiding Principles with an emphasis on the three perspectives of customers, individuals (consumers) and society. Each and every member of the Toyo Ink Group goes about their day to day duties in line with these principles.

Under SCC2017, the long-term corporate vision at the heart of our current business strategy, we have set ourselves the goal of turning the Toyo Ink Group into “a corporate group evolving into a globally useful specialty chemical manufacturer” by March 2017. To achieve this long-term vision, we have drawn up three medium-term business plans each lasting three years, called SCC-I, SCC-II and SCC-III, and intend to implement our business strategy accordingly.

As April 2008 marked the start of SCC-I, we have set out the following three points as basic policies.
First, we aim to “preempt emerging needs and get on track towards generating new growth in revenue through marketing-driven development and market cultivation.” This will be a case of establishing a business model that strikes a balance between “securing revenue through business growth” and “increasing revenue through effective new product development, niche market cultivation and collaboration with other companies (alliances).”
Second, we aim to “establish a new generation of SCM to shift towards manufacturing based on supplying products, resources and volumes in line with current needs.” Specifically, we intend to bolster our collaborative system of integrated production, sales and technology, focusing primarily on production as the core element of manufacturing, and ensure that every aspect of our products, from the basic formulae through to logistics, is handled on an appropriate scale in order to help improve quality and increase revenue.
Finally, we aim to “establish and improve our SCC management system, focusing on adjusting to different environments, addressing risks and coexisting achieving global symbiosis.” Amidst a rapidly changing array of requirements, including internal control and legislation, companies are finding themselves facing greater challenges in terms of both quantity and quality. In response to these diverse challenges, we intend to organically combine the knowledge and capabilities inherent in each division within the group, rather than making arbitrary administrative or organizational improvements, and establish and operate a system of proactive network-based management.

Our business activities are divided into four segments: Printing Inks, Graphic Arts Machinery & Supplies, Polymer Chemicals and Chemicals & Media Materials. Based on the three basic policies outlined above, we intend to take the technologies on which these businesses have been built, namely color and colorants technology, polymer technology and optoelectronic materials technology, and develop them into four key technologies in the form of hybrid application technology, precision polymer technology, fine chemical technology and natural product technology. We are also aiming to develop new products and businesses in areas such as optoelectronics, functional specialty materials, highly-functional packages and next generation printing solutions in an effort to become a specialty chemical manufacturer.

Since the establishment of the Toyo Ink Group, we have continually sought to create new value in human culture for our customers, employees and society in general through our business operations, products and services. It has always been our top priority to coexist alongside and earn the trust of society as a whole and fulfill our obligations as a corporate group. In our varying capacity as a chemical manufacturer with a growing global network, a company operating in the century of the environment and a “color company” whose mission is to add color to the culture in people’s lives, the Toyo Ink Group aims to remain a creator of new values for human culture in the future in line with individuals’ and society’s needs.