Technological watch

Toyobo Co., Ltd. (Toyobo) and Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) officially launch operations at their new joint venture company, Toyobo MC Corporation (Toyobo-MC), which will specialize in the planning, development, manufacturing and sales of functional materials.
Goals of New JV Company
With decarbonization, industrial restructuring, new technological advances and other developments radically reshaping the world of functional materials, Toyobo and MC reached an agreement on March 24th, 2022 to combine their respective strengths and establish this new joint venture.
Their aims through Toyobo-MC are to stimulate growth in their functional-materials businesses and to help create sustainable societies born of cross-industry innovation and evolution. To achieve those aims, the new company will combine Toyobo’s expertise in developing new products and technologies with MC’s broad industry know-how and management capabilities.
Toyobo-MC’s management team shall be led by Toyobo representative director and co-COO, Mr. Chikao Morishige, and MC senior vice president, Mr. Juro Baba. Driven by its vision to address global challenges through advanced functional materials, Toyobo-MC has made a commitment to ceaseless innovation. The new company shall endeavor to create new business models that extend beyond the functional-materials industry and seek out new alliances that are equally dedicated to cross-industry growth and development.
Overview of the Venture

• Name: Toyobo MC Corporation
• Address: Osaka Umeda Twin Towers South, 1-13-1, Umeda, Kita-ku, Osaka
• Representatives: President & CEO: Mr. Chikao Morishige (representative director and co-COO, Toyobo Co., Ltd.) executive vice president: Mr. Juro Baba (SVP, Mitsubishi Corporation) Operations Planning, development, manufacturing and sales of functional materials.
• Capital: 15,100,000,000 yen
• Launch Date: April 1, 2023
• Shareholder Ratio: Toyobo 51%, MC 49%

Focus on Mobility and Electronics Industries
Having already designated “Environmental Solutions” and “Mobility & Electronic Components” as growth fields, Toyobo-MC is now conceiving a proactive strategy for capturing opportunities therein. In the former, Toyobo-MC plans to take advantage of MC’s customer-and-partner connections to globally develop Toyobo’s clean technologies, including high-purity recovery devices designed to efficiently capture volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other effluents from the manufacturing of lithium-ion battery separators, water-treatment membranes used for desalination and other global water solutions, and some of the world’s most advanced ultra-high-strength (super) fibers.
Toyobo-MC also plans to leverage MC’s resources in the mobility-and-electronics space, in this case by using the latter’s expertise and network in the automotive industry, which extends to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other end users. That work will focus on advancing global sales and applications of Toyobo’s high-performance (engineering) plastics, adhesives and coating materials, all of which are in greater demand nowadays due to the need to make automobiles lighter and more electronically functional.
By executing this growth strategy, efficiently managing its portfolio, and shoring up its management foundations, Toyobo-MC is confident that it can achieve sales targets of 145 billion yen and 250 billion yen by fiscal years 2025 and 2030 respectively.The ambitions of the new joint venture are to provide the customers with high value-added solutions, contribute to sustainable growth and innovation in the functional-materials industry, and help to realize carbon-neutral societies by addressing industrial challenges.
Source: Mitsubishi Corporation