The Specialty Group, comprising Organic Chemicals, Bioscience, and Advanced Materials Divisions, is the driving force for growth and change at Tosoh through its promotion of product advances among diverse customers. The group boasts a wide-ranging portfolio of high performance, profitable products products that are typically strongly positioned and highly profitable in the diverse markets that they serve.
These are high-value-added products for well-established and for growing niche markets, and principally in the pharmaceutical, healthcare, electronics, and automotive industries, and they serve to hedge profitability against the cyclical nature of Tosoh’s commodity operations. Its innovative solutions enhance the efficiency, quality, and value of their products and drive their businesses. It supports technological innovation, contributes to the preservation of the environment, and develops products and services that help to improve medical treatments.
The group continues to develop differentiated, value-added products and to strengthen its R&D capabilities. It believes it will achieve significant growth by delivering technologies, products, and services to meet constantly changing, increasingly sophisticated societal needs.
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Playing a key role in providing people with life’s essentials, Tosoh’s Chlor-alkali Group, comprising of chlor-alkali, urethane, and cement operations, supplies global industry with the raw materials for the many products of a modern lifestyle. Manufacturers around the world depend on Tosoh and its chlor-alkali, cement, and polyurethane products to provide their production lines with stable supplies of those raw materials. Its vinyl isocyanate chain gives the Chlor-alkali Group the largest fully integrated manufacturing capacities of their kind for chemical commodities in Asia, which ensures the stable supply of commodities to world markets as well as to various Tosoh operations. The integration of the vinyl chain at the Yokkaichi Complex and the vinyl isocyanate chain at the Nanyo Complex has made Tosoh a formidable presence in the international chlor-alkali market. That integration makes possible the efficient bulk manufacturing of commodities for use in Tosoh’s and other manufacturers’ products.
The group’s Chlor-alkali Division produces caustic soda, vinyl chloride monomer (VCM), polyvinyl chloride paste (PVC), calcium hypochlorite, sodium bicarbonate, and others. Its Urethane Division manufactures isocyanate raw materials and functional urethanes, including methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI), toluene diisocyanate (TDI), hexamethylene diisocyanate (HDI), polyurethane adhesives, coating resins, elastomers, polyisocyanates for polyurethane paints, and polyols.
MDI is an aromatic diisocyanate key as a feedstock in the production of polyurethane-based products, and a popular product in its own right. Tosoh supplies MDI to manufacturers domestically and internationally. MDI and TDI, another aromatic diisocyanate, result in such products as elastomers, coatings, foams, and adhesives. HDI is an aliphatic diisocyanate used in specialty products, such as high-performance paints and adhesives.
Tosoh’s cement operations, also overseen by the Chlor-alkali Group, consist of the manufacture of cement and the consignment of the production output to Taiheiyo Cement Corporation, Japan’s largest cement manufacturer. Tosoh collects by-products, including coal ash and slag, from its operations and other, outside sources that the Chlor-alkali Group incorporates into its cement manufacturing process. This reduces costs considerably and contributes significantly to the communities and the environments where Tosoh operates.
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Tosoh’s petrochemical operations stay competitive by constantly adjusting to market challenges. The Petrochemical Group plays a critical role in Tosoh’s dual operational strategy by producing stable-demand, revenue-generating commodity products and more-profitable high-performance specialty products. Amid constantly increasing global petrochemical production capacity, Tosoh’s Petrochemical Group, comprising Olefins and Polymers Divisions, remains competitive by cutting its production costs and moving its products upstream. The group’s enabling of its facilities to use different feedstock lowers expenses and helps to hedge the risk of price fluctuations. At the heart of Tosoh’s operations, it supplies roughly half of the ethylene Tosoh requires for its vinyl isocyanate chain and polyethylene operations.
The group’s primary product lines are polymers, including polyethylene and functional polymer products, and olefins. By managing the procurement of raw materials such as naphtha; by balancing the internal production and external sourcing of ethylene; and by constantly developing differentiated, high-value-added grades of products, the Petrochemical Group supports Tosoh’s efforts to achieve balance between its commodity and specialty goods.
Tosoh’s ability to manufacture hydrocarbon-based products, such as ethylene, propylene, cumene, and aromatic compounds, in an integrated, efficient fashion is due largely to olefin feedstock supplied by the Petrochemical Group. The company also sells the Petrochemical Group’s olefins to external customers, who use them to manufacture products for automotive, construction, and diverse other applications.
Products from the group’s polymer operations include ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA), which can be found in solar cells and shoe soles; low-density polyethylene (LDPE), applications for which include medicine and food packaging; linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) for thin-film materials; and high-density polyethylene (HDPE), which is used in injection moldings and high-purity pharmaceutical containers.
Polymer operations also produce functional polymers such as chloroprene rubber (CR), chlorosulfonated polyethylene (CSM) rubber, and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) resin. CSM—for which Tosoh is the world’s leading supplier—and CR are most commonly used in automotive applications. And PPS resin, a unique, high-performance plastic, is becoming increasingly popular in automotive engineering, as it enables the development of vehicles that are lighter and that therefore offer improved fuel efficiency.
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Effective June 29, 2010, Tosoh moved the water treatment business of its subsidiary Organo Corporation to its Engineering Group. The soil purification and remediation operations of Eco-Techno Corporation and the construction operations of Tohoku Denki Tekko Co., Ltd., all of which formerly were under the Service Group, also have been transferred to the Engineering Group.
Today, the activities of the Engineering Group are driven mainly by water treatment engineering specialist Organo Corporation. Tohoku Denki Tekko Co., Ltd., and other group companies involved in construction also contribute to the Engineering Group’s bottom line.
Organo’s business is focused in three areas: its plant business, which entails the sales of water treatment systems to customers in the electronics, chemical, energy, food and beverage, paper and pulp, and healthcare industries; its solution business, which provides system maintenance and management, energy efficiency and environmental impact consulting, and water treatment outsourcing services; and its functional products business, which handles the sales of water treatment systems and chemicals and of materials used in food processing.
The primary business of Tohoku Denki Tekko is construction. It builds various types of plants and furnishes electrical design, production, installation, and diverse other construction services. Tosoh places orders with Tohoku Denki Tekko for work on some of its facilities.
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Tohoku Denki Tekko Co., Ltd. (Japanese) »
Ensuring seamless interaction between company and customer, Tosoh’s ancillary businesses help the Tosoh Group perform at peak by providing for timely delivery and cost advantage through a host of support services to meet organizational business objectives and goals. It also requires the timely provision of those services—transporting goods and analyzing organic and inorganic chemicals, polymers, and electronic materials—to the company’s different businesses and to their customers.
Ancillary businesses encompass trading companies and an array of professional services companies. The latter provide logistics, administration, personnel, and IT support. One of these companies offers research and analysis in support of Tosoh’s development of innovative technologies, products, and services.
These companies have evolved into profit-generating businesses in their own right. They compete for Tosoh Group business with outside entities. And this ensures healthy cost-competition and inspires enhanced administrative performance and technological development.