Sustainability
Message from the President
Message from the President
Thanks to your continued support and goodwill, our Group celebrated its 140th anniversary in March 2025. I would like to express my deepest gratitude. At this important milestone, as President and Representative Director, I am reaffirming my wholehearted devotion to advancing our Group’s growth and development. The Medium- to Long-Term Business Plan SHIFT2030, launched in 2021, entered Phase 2 this fiscal year. Despite the challenging business environment during Phase 1, including the COVID-19 pandemic, we achieved our numerical targets. In Phase 2, we will build on those results to take on greater challenges by expanding existing businesses, strengthening profitability, and developing new businesses and markets. The entire Group will unite its strength to achieve these ambitious goals. We sincerely ask for your continued guidance and support.
Advancing our global strategy and new business development
Phase 2 of the Medium- to Long-Term Business Plan SHIFT2030 (final year: FY2027) sets a target of 105 billion yen in net sales, while Phase 3 (final year: FY2030) aims for 120 billion yen. Phase 2 launched this fiscal year and is positioned as a period to continue expanding existing businesses and improving profitability, while also nurturing the seeds of new technologies and previously developed businesses.
Our global strategy forms the core of this phase. Last fiscal year, we established the Global Business Development Dept. as a cross-functional organization. Previously, each business department had independently advanced global expansion. The Global Business Development Dept. was established to drive global initiatives across the entire Nitta Group beyond the boundaries of individual business departments. This department is not intended to handle absolutely all aspects of our future global strategy and activities. Each business department will continue to promote globalization within its own area, while the Global Business Development Dept. collaborates with divisions and subsidiaries to gather information from overseas partners and utilize distributor networks. The department also plays a role in collecting new information from international markets and customers beyond existing business domains. It also serves as a platform for developing global talent through practical experience.
The belt products business has been at the forefront of our global expansion, building trust with customers and establishing strong distributor networks. These networks represent valuable sources of information and an important business asset for the Company. By leveraging the networks that we have built over many years through coordinated efforts among Group companies and business divisions, rather than individually, we aim to strengthen them even further.
In the domestic market as well, we will further strengthen collaboration with distributors to deepen trust. Japan’s domestic market structure reflects global market diversity, and we often gain knowledge and insights useful for global expansion during communication with domestic customers. The experience and trust cultivated in Japan thus serve as essential know-how for our global initiatives. Further strengthening our relationships with domestic customers will play an extremely important role in advancing our future global expansion.
From my own experience leading the Industrial Products Division, I believe that the fundamentals of business—how to conduct operations and build trust—are the same both domestically and internationally. Understanding customer needs accurately and persistently solving difficult issues steadily establishes trust. In overseas markets, sudden organizational changes or personnel transfers can sometimes reset relationships, but such circumstances also create opportunities to build new partnerships with companies we had not previously engaged with. I have great faith in our employees’ ability to transcend domestic and international boundaries, build relationships of trust with customers, and grow personally while contributing to future business development.
Regardless of region, today’s rapidly changing market and business environment call for flexible and prompt organizational restructuring and creation. The ability to respond quickly and effectively to such change is essential in any country or region. The business philosophy and manufacturing spirit handed down since our founding is a source of universal value that transcends markets. These values will lead us to success in our global strategy and the development of new markets. For this reason, talent capable of demonstrating strength in overseas and new markets will become more critical than ever. We have long promoted the development of young global talent through our Overseas Trainee Program. Within the Global Business Development Dept., we will continue to actively advance global human resource development through overseas assignments, on-the-ground experience, and interactions with local bases and partners.
Selection and concentration to allocate management resources to growth markets
Our Company has valued people-oriented management since our founding, cultivating a corporate culture that emphasizes education. In recent years, we have promoted workplace environments suited to the times through personnel system reforms and rank-specific training. Addressing the pressing issue of labor shortages requires not only securing and training personnel but also efficiently and effectively allocating and deploying them to maximize individual potential. While the rapid advancement of AI and technological innovation is driving significant digital progress in society, there are always aspects of business involving human relationships that can only be handled with a personal touch. We must delegate tasks that can be automated to AI and other tools, to allow people to focus more time on work that only humans can do. To that end, we have been advancing labor-saving measures through DX while actively assigning personnel to departments where human expertise and skills are essential, improving efficiency and bolstering growth.
In addition to improving business profitability, the selection and concentration of existing businesses and products are key challenges from the perspectives of effective personnel utilization and optimal capital investment. We introduced business ROIC (Return on Invested Capital) as a new financial indicator target to manage profitability by business and product from the previous fiscal year. We calculate ROIC by business to promote selection and concentration, working toward improving profitability and corporate value. Business diversification is one of our key strengths. Through years of operation under a divisional independent accounting system, we have developed numerous Strategic Business Units (SBUs). We plan to connect and reallocate the human, equipment, and know-how held by each department and focus them on growth markets. By strengthening our business foundation through the expansion and profitability improvement of existing businesses and proactively investing the capital gained into high-value-added businesses, we aim to achieve sustainable growth over the medium to long term.
As part of new business creation, we are promoting the expansion of Namd™ into high value-added industrial fields. In the medical and life sciences fields, we are developing and marketing aseptic manufacturing environment systems and advancing a joint development project for cell sheet manufacturing equipment for regenerative medicine toward commercialization.
Established in January 2025 with the maple syrup business, Wakutto Nitta is now also developing new businesses that leverage the effective use of the company-owned forests in Hokkaido.
Based on the sales performance achieved in Phase 1 of our Medium- to Long-Term Business Plan, we aim to expand sales by approximately 15 billion yen over three years in Phase 2. To achieve this ambitious goal, we must pursue dynamic and rapid business development, including M&A. It takes time for the results of M&A to be reflected in financial figures, so we plan to actively engage in numerous projects starting from Phase 2, advancing business development from both short- and long-term perspectives. We recognize that not every initiative will succeed, so we will continuously explore and pursue multiple possibilities, steadily connecting our efforts to success in Phase 3 and beyond.
Together with all stakeholders toward the future
In these uncertain and difficult times, the Nitta Group must respond more flexibly and with stronger execution than ever before.
To ride these waves of major change and move toward the next stage of growth, our entire Group must unite and combine our strengths. Beyond strengthening collaboration among business divisions, we will further deepen trust with domestic and overseas distributors and business partners, focusing not only on surface-level needs but also on identifying and continuously providing latent needs. Dialogue and collaboration with all stakeholders will play a key role in this. Within the Company, we will continue to be an organization where employees in different business fields support one another, build healthy relationships, and strive for growth together. Each employee carries forward the founder’s spirit of manufacturing products that are not available in Japan and contributing to society through manufacturing, a spirit that continues to underpin our Group Philosophy today. As management, we strive to translate the founder’s philosophy into employees’ action plans and to create a workplace environment where all employees can demonstrate abundant creativity, strong execution, and enthusiasm.
We also believe that the health of every employee forms the foundation of sustainable corporate growth, and are actively promoting health management. Creating better workplace environments that allow employees to work in both physical and mental well-being, and supporting their health maintenance and improvement are part of our efforts to enhance corporate value and contribute to society.
Exchanges and co-creation inside and outside the Company, and exposure to diverse opinions, are also essential to cultivating creativity.
Each employee’s strength is the driving force that supports our sustainable growth.
We extend our deepest gratitude to our investors. We value dialogue with all stakeholders, striving to build relationships in which we can share the joy of growth and success together. Recognizing profit return as one of our key management priorities, we are working to strengthen our corporate structure while ensuring fair profit distribution according to business performance. As part of our shift to management that is conscious of cost of capital and stock price, we plan to increase dividends by at least 10 yen per share every year through the fiscal year ending March 31, 2028, with reference to our shareholder return policy (a consolidated dividend payout ratio of 30% or higher and a dividend on equity ratio [DOE] of 2.5% or higher). Through continued stable and steady dividend increases, we intend to meet the expectations of our stakeholders.
I remember seeing the words: “Meet to discuss, discuss to decide, decide and take responsibility,” when I was a new employee at the Nara Plant. That phrase remains deeply engraved on my heart today. Colleagues gather, decide on a course of action, and see it through with responsibility. When facing difficulties or tackling big goals, we pool our strength, never give up, and see it through to the end. To me, this is our strength. By uniting the strengths of every employee and all Group companies, and together with all stakeholders, we will continue to advance toward our vision for SHIFT2030 and beyond into the future.
