SustainabilityMessage from the president

Kazuya Kobayashi President and Representative Director
Kazuya Kobayashi
President and Representative Director

We are using our unique expertise in manufacturing every way we can to help create a sustainable society.

ESG management that values manufacturing

I am Kazuya Kobayashi, and I am honored to introduce myself upon my appointment on June 23, 2023 as Representative Director, President and Executive Officer of TOCALO.

TOCALO is thoroughly engaged in applying ESG-focused management toward our vision of creating a “bright future for people and nature,” and I intend to put all of my effort into continuing this drive because I believe ESG initiatives are extremely important.

In my career, I have served as the General Manager of two plants and the General Manager of the Production Headquarters, and I would like to use this experience to put particular focus on how we can use manufacturing to contribute to a sustainable society.

Manufacturing requires highly dedicated human resources. For our employees that are committed fully to their jobs at all of our worksites, I intend to invest fully to enhance production efficiency and improve the work environment. Management and employees will share ideas so we can continue delivering consistent quality and better products to our clients.

I particularly want to emphasize the pride of being a craftsperson involved in manufacturing, and the expertise each employee has in the work they do. Rather than simply pursuing efficiency by mechanically mass-producing products, we put care and effort into our work. Some defects can be prevented with just five seconds of care. With just a little thought, we can deliver heartfelt products to our customers. I learned this from the generation before me, and I want to pass this down to the generation that follows me.

Connecting individual employee growth to the Company’s growth

I also want our employees to have clear goals for themselves and to know what they need to do so they can attain their goals. In addition, I would like them to think carefully about how pursuing their goals can contribute to the Company.

To develop that caliber of human resources, we will invest all that is necessary and aim to be a company that is richly diverse and respects each person’s opinion. We will also allow flexible workstyles, such as remote work, and create a work structure that can accommodate individual workstyle proposals.

Through measures like these we are creating an environment that supports the career ambitions of all employees and that will lead to overall sustainable growth for TOCALO.

Commitment to climate change action

Kazuya Kobayashi President and Representative

We are also working to reduce the environmental impact of manufacturing operations. I have been promoting inter-plant initiatives since fiscal 2021 when I was General Manager of the Production Headquarters. One initiative was to take successful energy-saving initiatives that were being implemented at individual plants and share that know-how with all of our plants. We will continue to incorporate best practices in this way to further reduce our overall environmental impact.

Electricity accounts for 95% of the energy that TOCALO consumes, so reducing our power consumption will be essential. Three of the major consumers of electricity are compressors, dust collectors, and cooling equipment. While maintaining our standard of quality, we are working to improve the efficiency of our thermal spraying technology, which will save energy by shortening the time the equipment is in operation.

Climate change is having a growing impact around the world, and we are doing our part to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from our operations. Based on the GHG emissions reduction target decided by the Japanese Cabinet in October 2021, we have set a target to reduce the consolidated Group’s Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 46% in fiscal 2030 compared to fiscal 2013, representing less than 54% of the fiscal 2013 amount. We had set an interim target of reducing non-consolidated emissions to less than 54% by fiscal 2025, and achieved this target ahead of schedule in fiscal 2022 by introducing electric power derived from renewable energy sources.

We are also advancing environmental activities by pursuing the increasing opportunities to secure orders for our coating technologies that help customers reduce energy consumption and GHG emissions. We are promoting technological development and public relations for our coating technologies toward targets for order volume in fiscal 2050 in the environmental field of environmental energy equipment and repaired and refurbished products. We will continue increasing our capacity for in-house power generation and other initiatives to reduce emissions and the environmental impact of our manufacturing activities and attain our Group environmental targets.

Joining with local industries for further growth in the future

Kazuya Kobayashi President and Representative

Any industry can use our technology with any material. Renewable energy generation equipment and semiconductor manufacturing equipment are only the beginning. We are not restricting our focus to specific industries, but are looking into a wide range of industries for applications for our surface modification technology.

At this moment, I am strongly interested in creating strong ties between our Company and local communities. We have manufacturing sites participating in industries all across Japan, and I would like each site to reflect the characteristics of their region. By strengthening these connections, the growth of our business can revitalize a region and help ensure our business continuity.

We will achieve sustainable growth by valuing the interrelation of our employees, the environment, and local communities and by remembering that the small extra effort of dedicated craftsmanship may seem inefficient or unnecessary but is the heart of manufacturing.

Aiming to be a 100-year company and the perennial company of choice.

Hiroshi Goto
Director,
Managing Executive Officer; General Manager, Administrative Headquarters

Hiroshi Goto, Director, Managing Executive Officer; General Manager, Administrative Headquarters

I participate in management as General Manager of the Administrative Headquarters and as a Director. Our company has thrived for 72 years, but for us to reach 100 years, it is essential that we take a long-term view, at the core of which is our sustainability.

When we unveiled our medium-term management plan in November 2021, we also presented our long-term vision for a “bright future for people and nature.” Now, in the plan’s second year, looking back on the past, the top-down approach within the Company has been a success and is steadily producing results. However, I feel that we are still only halfway through the process in terms of every employee getting behind the plan and putting it into action. We are therefore putting together a new training program that we will implement throughout the Company to set in motion a bottom-up approach from employees.

We have identified five items as issues of materiality that are essential to address in order to fulfill our long-term vision. Among the five, the most critical materiality is “Advanced coating and latent market development.” Our business model is not to mass-produce top-selling products, but to make products to order. We must continue to develop new coating technologies and cultivate new markets for society to keep needing our company, and for us to survive.
In recent years, we have been actively investing capital, supported by our strong sales for semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and we expect these conditions to continue for several more years. However, our ability to continue to grow our business when these favorable conditions come to an end will depend on our ability to develop advanced coatings and cultivate latent markets. We must devote all of our efforts to developing coatings that fully meet society’s needs and expanding their applications worldwide.
We have also stepped up how we use our business activities to contribute to addressing environmental issues. We are seeing steady results from the KPIs we set for the value of orders in the environmental and energy fields. While working to reduce the environmental impact of our manufacturing activities, we will also continue to develop coatings that improve the environmental performance of various industries.

Another key materiality is cultivating and activating diverse human resources. We established the Diversity Promotion Committee in July 2020 and the Diversity Promotion Division in February 2022, and I feel that the Company’s systems and mechanisms for strengthening the diversity of human resources have been put into place in the past two years. I also feel that the understanding that a wide variety of human resources, including the active participation of women, is necessary for the Company’s long-term growth is steadily taking root in the Company.
Beginning in fiscal 2022, we launched a “global experience” program to develop human resources who will be the core of our worldwide business expansion and an internal “DX human resources recruitment” program in which we are selecting and training individuals in data and digital technologies that will lead to future innovation. We will continue to advance programs toward new directions and growth as we cultivate the human resources we will need for the Company’s future.

In April 2023, I began visiting all of our factories and talking to employees to get a direct “feel” for how our sustainability strategies and measures are permeating our activities and what our employees think about them. In talking with younger employees, they reminded me of an eye-opening fact that, to them, the year 2051, when we will become a 100-year company, is not a point in the distant future, it’s a point along the path to their future.

I will do my utmost to fulfill my responsibility to deliver to the next generation a TOCALO that will continue to be the “company of choice” by society in our 100th year and beyond for the next 30 and 50 years.

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