New Year’s Greetings from President & CEO (Summary)

Tsutomu Tannowa
President & CEO
Mitsui Chemicals, Inc.

I would first like to wish all of you the very best as we begin the new year of 2020.

Mitsui Chemicals continued to face incidents and accidents for 2019, following on from similar issues in 2018. It is unfortunate that we have not yet managed to put a stop to this. As should be obvious, safety considerations are the starting point for all business activities at the Mitsui Chemicals Group, and focusing on these is one of our major principles.

Coming into the new year, we will once again push for each and every employee to fully take on board our policy of placing safety as a top priority. We hope in turn to make 2020 a year with zero workplace accidents.

Three years have passed since we put the 2025 Long-Term Business Plan (LTBP) into action. For fiscal 2019, we have faced not only difficult changes in the business environment but also transient issues such as typhoon-related damage. And this has led us to downwardly revise our projected business results for the fiscal year, bringing our operating income forecast down from 105 billion yen to 84 billion yen.

Still, despite challenging circumstances, we have been able to maintain profitability levels for our three business growth areas, while our Basic Materials Business Sector has undergone restructuring to help bring about improved stability. I see these developments as being the result of everybody’s unceasing efforts, and I think they show that we have not gone wrong in choosing the direction of the company. Going forward, in addition to devoting our utmost efforts to reaching the revised forecast, I would like to see Mitsui Chemicals take a medium-to long-term perspective and continue to pursue portfolio reform.

Political, economic and environmental issues are bubbling up around the world like magma. In the short term, there are no expectations of seeing a resolution to the effects that rising populism and protectionist policies are having on global trade and economy. And concerns are only growing larger around climate change, marine plastic waste and other such environmental issues that relate to the Mitsui Chemicals Group.

Here, I would like all of you to be conscious of what is going on in the world now and how it affects your own work and activities. I would also ask you all to keep your ears to the ground and respond to these things in a flexible manner.

Since starting in my current role at Mitsui Chemicals, I have been saying to everyone that having good communication in an organization brings good fortune. As I see it, being able to communicate openly about issues makes for happier employees, lets us bring more people and more information together and ultimately leads to better results.

For Mitsui Chemicals to continue growing, I would ask all of you out there at our bases around the world to deepen the communications you have, aim for solidarity and make joint efforts to build an organization that passes knowledge around freely.

And as Japan looks toward its hosting of the Olympics this year, I hope from the bottom of my heart that it will be a bright, healthy year for all of you.