Sumitomo Chemical Launches New Corporate Business Plan for FY2019 to FY2021

Sumitomo Chemical ("the Company") today announced its new Corporate Business Plan for the period from fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2021. Looking ahead to the coming Society 5.0 (Super Smart Society), the Company will enhance efforts to raise productivity significantly through promoting digital innovation. At the same time, the Company will work vigorously to accelerate technological or other innovation to help solve an array of problems facing society, thereby contributing to the realization of a sustainable society. The new Corporate Business Plan carries a slogan "Change and Innovation 3.0: For a Sustainable Future", under which the Company will work through six key management agendas, such as "Accelerate the development of next-generation businesses" and "Improve productivity through digital innovation", to achieve its stated performance targets.

 

2. Basic policy
 

(1) Accelerate the development of next-generation businesses
 

For domains of next-generation business, the company has identified four priority areas which are vitally important for solving serious social challenges or improving Quality of Life and at the same time where the best of the Sumitomo Chemical Group's proprietary technologies can be deployed. Those priority areas are Health Care, Reducing Environmental Impact, Food, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT). To further strengthen the company’s own technological capabilities, they will collaborate with startups, academia and others to build an innovation ecosystem so that the company can accelerate delivering innovation autonomously and sustainably and creating new businesses.

By the expanded use of AI and IoT, the company will realize drastic improvement in efficiency and quality in R&D, manufacturing, supply chain, sales, and indirect jobs. In addition, the company will make active use of materials informatics to ensure more speedy, efficient and sophisticated R&D.

The company will concentrate management resources on those businesses, as a growth driver, where the company can expect sustainable market growth and technology can play a key role as a source of competitiveness.

 

The company will ensure closer control of costs and assets through more effectively managed operations, such as rationalization, shorter Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC), and business restructuring or withdrawal, while generating cash flow as planned from capital investments and loans hitherto conducted.

 

In addition to the four points above, the company will also work to: (5) Employ, develop and leverage human resources for sustainable growth; and (6) Ensure full and strict compliance and maintain safe and stable operations.
 

3. Performance targets
 

Performace targets to achieve on a consolidated basis under the new Corporate Business Plan are as follows:

 

In the medium- to long-term, the company aims to achieve stably the following figures of financial indicators:

4. Plans for Investments, R&D Expenditures, etc.
 

The company plans to allocate corporate resources as below for FY2019 to FY2021.