We Provide Consistent Support to a Society Living with Trees

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As a trading company specialized in lumber within the Nippon Paper Group that advocates “Comprehensive Biomass Company shaping the future with trees,” we handle all kinds of wood products, ranging from the raw wood, lumber products, building materials, and wood chips for papermaking to biomass fuel. For half a century, not only have we assigned a trading company function but we have also developed businesses that are deeply involved in forests and the lumber produced from them, such as assuming responsibility for maintaining and managing the forests owned by Nippon Paper Industries —forests that are the second largest in Japan among private companies.

The circumstances surrounding the company and lumber changed dramatically in the last half century. During that time, cheap lumber imports from overseas rapidly increased because of active demand for new housing construction. Overseas lumber had a large share of the market. That trend continues today, and our country’s low lumber self-sufficiency rate is a contributing factor in hampering the desirable development of domestic forestry. Under such circumstances, we focused on the superior value of domestic timber from early on and put our efforts into expanding the timber transaction volume in order to nurture the businesses that differ from other companies and that could take advantage of our unique strengths. The percentage of domestic timber that we handle expanded to the current 60% in amount. We aim to further increase that percentage.

Another change is the increase in demand for wood fuel. Amid the trend to reduce carbon emissions, power plants that run on biomass, which is a renewable energy source, have been in operation across the country. In order for biomass power generation to become more widely used, a stable supply of fuel is essential. As a member of the Nippon Paper Group, we have built a nationwide network to collect papermaking chips. Based on that network, we enhanced the collection of a variety of biomass fuels, such as fuel chips. Chips as fuel will expand the uses of low-quality materials that are not suitable for timber products or as papermaking materials but have the potential to have a significant impact on the future forestry industry in Japan. This field must be further developed in the future, and we will focus our efforts into the business.

Our strength is making full use of each tree in the forest by taking advantage of our substantial knowledge and the many years of experience in material collection from our supply network. To pass this corporate value down to future generations and continue to grow, we believe it is of the utmost importance to create an environment where each employee can cultivate their individuality and actively and enthusiastically work in different fields in our company. Consequently, we are committed to the development of human resources.

We see the precise changes in the business environment as a great opportunity, and we are striving for new growth in the future. In order to contribute to building a sustainable society and making people’s lives more affluent as a professional company that handles trees, which is a renewable resource, we will strive each day to achieve our goals.

President and Representative Director
Shigeru Inoue