Message from the President & CEO

Yuraseiko & Company, a limited partnership company to become Honshu Chemical Industry Co., Ltd. later, was founded in 1914 by Asajiro Yura. Yura and his partners became the first to design and implement a plant to distill benzene (recognized in 2009 by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry as a Heritage of Industrial Modernization, and in 2012 by the Chemical Society of Japan as a Chemical Heritage), the material for aniline, and successfully industrialized aniline production. The following year, the company completed phenol manufacturing equipment, industrializing synthetic phenol production as well. Drawing on its technologies to synthesize phenol derivatives built up since its founding as a pioneer, Honshu Chemical creates and supplies distinct fine chemical products.

Honshu Chemical’s management policy is to create and provide products of value for customers by developing and effectively utilizing its unique technologies as fine chemicals specialists, thereby growing with customers and contributing to the welfare of humanity. With this policy in mind, all of us at Honshu Chemical work hard daily to win the true trust of all our stakeholders and the local communities where we operate.

Under this management policy, we currently position the following four product categories as our core businesses: (1) cresol derivatives (vitamin E for livestock feed, electronic chemicals and materials for antioxidants and other products); (2) biphenols (materials for liquid crystal polymers [LCP] and polyphenylsulfone [PPSU]); (3) electronic chemicals (for use in manufacturing processes for semiconductors, flat panel displays and so forth); and (4) specialty bisphenols (materials for specialty polycarbonate resins and specialty epoxy resins). With a focus on these products, we engage in vigorous efforts on niche businesses in Japan and abroad in such areas as telecommunications, automotive and pharmaceutical.

Honshu Chemical has developed its own unique technologies since its founding to meet the market needs that grow ever more sophisticated and diversified. By capitalizing on those technologies, the company will work even harder to continue developing and providing high-quality, characteristic fine chemical products well into the future.

Honshu Chemical Industry was founded in Wakayama, Japan, in 1914. The company built Japan’s first benzene distillation plant independently and successfully industrialized the production of aniline, a dye material, in response to the shut-down of dye imports into Japan due to WWI. This pioneering founding spirit became Honshu Chemical’s corporate philosophy, serving as the source of its superior technologies and creativity.