NEWS

2019 New Year’s Greetings Happy New Year to everyone in the Daicel Group.

I would like to express my special gratitude to all employees who continued to work at their respective workplaces during the New Year’s holiday. In 2019, Daicel Corporation proudly commemorates its centennial. As I have mentioned before, I would like you all to use not only the actual day of our 100th anniversary, but also the year before and year after, to think over what we should do looking towards the next 100 years. This year marks the final year of “3D-III,” our three-year Mid-Term Plan. Achieving our target numbers will be not be easy, but I am confident we can all put in a great final effort. Now is also the time for us to consider our upcoming long-term plan as our first step in embarking on the next 100 years of our history. We have, in fact, already begun to formulate our Daicel Group Long-Term Vision 2030 Project, but there remains much more to be done. Last year, we produced a TV program titled “The Repatriation of Celluloid Dolls from the United States: The Challenge of Monozukuri Japan in the Meiji Era.”  
(Youtube: https://youtu.be/MBZ3H2SyT2I )

This program told the story of how our celluloid business began, and it introduced the birth of the manufacturing effort — known colloquially as monozukuri — that eventually laid the foundation for our present success. The program focuses mainly on our first president, Mokichi Morita, but the growth of our company to its current status is clearly the result of the unyielding passion of many of our predecessors. Daicel is not a company in which each individual works alone. We are not a top-down company, but one that encourages all to collaborate, as this makes for a more enjoyable work experience. Looking ahead, I am hopeful that we will be able to formulate a vision for the next ten years, not only under the direction of management and division leaders, but also by creating an environment in which all are free to express their opinions. In our discussions of the budget and our mid-term plan, many numbers will be talked about, but the world of the next ten or even 100 years is not one that can be represented with numbers. Nor is it a world that can be taken on by a single employee alone. We should all seek to envision what we intend to accomplish while linking the past, the present, and the future in an unbroken line. Although we all differ in many ways, I am confident that we can come together to share a single vision once we engage in discussions with passion. So, in closing, I hope my words have encouraged all of you to participate in forging our future vision together.

Misao Fudaba

President & CEO

Daicel Corporation