BookTitleToyota Tsusho 70-Year History

Summary

Toyota Tsusho 70-Year History

in September 2004 through Toyota Tsusho’s 100%investment to launch Green Metals Hokuriku (currentlyGreen Metals Japan Inc.) in Imadate-cho, FukuiPrefecture, which became the first domestic deploymentof the green metals business model. In May 2008, ToyotaTsusho cofounded Green Metals Hokkaido with MatecInc.6 Promoting the Rare Earth Resource BusinessAmid November 2008 concerns about tight suppliesin rare metals and rare earth resources, Toyota Tsushoacquired all the shares in a company specializing in theseresources, Wako Bussan Co., Ltd., for the purpose ofsecuring a stable supply and to take over the commercialrights of rare earth resources, rare metals, andsemiconductors, eventually changing its name to ToyotsuRare Earths in April 2009.Taking advantage of Wako Bussan’s commercialrights in India, Toyota Tsusho established wholly ownedsubsidiary Toyotsu Rare Earths India (TREI) and enteredthe separation and purification of rare earth resourcesbusiness with the mixed chloride rare earth resources thatare the by-product generated after nuclear fuel materialsuranium and thorium are extracted. In April 2016, theseparation and refining of rare earth resources, such asneodymium, cerium, lanthanum, and praseodymium,began. These products were then shipped to Japan andEurope. Toyotsu Rare Earths later signed a memorandumof understanding for the development of rare earthresource mines with Vietnam’s local state-owned mineralcompaniesthatheldminingrights.7 Expanding the Electromagnetic Steel SheetBusinessThe Metals Division aimed to expand into energy andinfrastructure. The business sector of the most interestwas the directional electromagnetic steel sheets used asiron cores inside transformers. Toyota Tsusho sought toexpand this business as it considered this could increaseefficiency of the world’s use of energy and could becrucial to contribute to growth in emerging countries.To this end, Toyota Tsusho established Techno SteelProcessing de Mexico, which started operations in 2003,and increased its stake in India’s electromagnetic steelsheet processing and iron core manufacturer Kryfs PowerComponents Ltd. to 20% in 2013.Toyota Tsusho also established Techno Steel ProcessingTurkey Celik Bukme ve Isleme Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S.(TSPT) in Turkey and it started commercial productionin February 2015. Europe expected further demandfor high-efficiency superconducting electromagneticsteel sheets as a result of mandatory high-efficiencyregulations for transformers that went into effect in July2015, and given Turkey’s location adjacent to the threeregions of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East,TSPT served as a strategic export base. The founding ofTSPT had established a global three-key-region structuretocapturetheglobalmarket.8 Capital Participation in Europe’s ScrapBusiness CompaniesIn April 2014, Toyota Tsusho decided to acquire 39.9%of the issued shares of Scholz Holding GMBH, a scrapbusiness company based in Germany. The companywas ranked the No. 2 scrap metal business in the worldbased on the amount of metal scrap it handled and wasexpanding its recovery of resources from recyclableitems, including ELVs, to a network spanning 26countries worldwide, particularly in Europe. ScholzAG had been working on a highly selective process thatwould recover resources, including metals from residueejected from the crusher. Thus, synergies with ToyotaTsusho’s metal scrap business were expected. However,plummeting resource prices hit a low point in summerToyotsu Rare Earths IndiaHistory133