Starting from April, Mitsubishi Materials has commenced its Medium-Term Management Strategy 2031 (FY2031 Strategy), which will run from FY2024 to FY2031. The main theme of the plan is “circulating resources.” Why are we focusing on this now? And what kind of company does Mitsubishi Materials envision itself to be in 2030? To answer these questions, we spoke to Mr. Ono, Chief Executive Officer.

Mitsubishi Materials supplies basic materials indispensable to the world, guided by our corporate philosophy of “For People, Society and the Earth.” In formulating the FY2031 Strategy, we have set our commitment for the year 2030 to be “For people, society and the earth, circulating resources for a sustainable future.” This strategy charts the course we must take to achieve this commitment.
In our previous medium-term management strategy, our efforts focused on optimizing our business portfolio. As a company with a diverse range of businesses, we recognized the need to identify our strengths and allocate our management resources effectively to continue providing value to society. After careful consideration, we have identified “expansion of the resource recycling” and “enhancing the supply of high-performance materials and products” as business areas on which we should focus our efforts.
The key phrase behind our efforts is “resource circulation.” With limited resources, we must find ways to use them without waste for the benefit of people, society, and the earth. In recent years, the idea of a circular economy has received a lot of attention. In addition to designing products that are easy to recycle and reuse, prolonging their lifespan, and sharing goods, we must also view unutilized waste as a resource and recycle it to create a sustainable society. We have decided to incor- porate this way of thinking into our newly established vision of “Circuating resources for a sustainable future” for future projects. But what do we mean by “Circulating resources for a sustainable future”? Our role is to establish a platform for the circulation of metal resources by leveraging our advanced nonferrous metal recycling technology developed through years of manufacturing expertise and know-how. In addition, we will join this platform as a player to create new value.
You may be wondering, “Why must we establish the platform  and be a player?” or “Why should a manufacturing company focus on the venous business of extracting resources from waste in addition to the arterial business of manufacturing products?” However, there are societal needs that can only be understood by working on both ends of the process, the arterial and venous businesses. By doing so, we can apply these insights to our manufacturing operations and create high-value products that grow the entire value chain.
We will be sharing more about our strategies and initiatives that reflect our vision of “Circulating resources for a sustainable future” in this issue’s special feature and upcoming editions, so please keep an eye out for updates.

Our Commitment
For people, society and the earth, circulating resources for a sustainable society
[Prosperous society | Recycling-oriented society | Decarbonized society]

What are arterial and venous businesses?
Venous businesses recover, recycle, and reuse used products. Arterial businesses create new ones. The businesses were named by equivalating the flow of their materials and products to blood circulation. Mitsubishi Materials’ venous business is the recycling of disposed, used products, and reusing them as materials.
We will expand the scope of the business’s coverage as well as the regional scale of its deployment by combining the technology we have cultivated through home appliance recycling over the years and our metal extracting technology and experience for smelting, in which our strength lies, to establish metal resource recycling. On the other hand, in the arterial business, we add new value to the gold, silver, copper, and other metal materials extracted through the venous business and distribute them throughout the world. Under the Medium-Term Management Strategy 2031, we will strengthen our arterial business by providing high-performance materials and products, especially to growing markets like those of semiconductors, xEVs (electric vehicles), and aerospace. Furthermore, in advancing these businesses, we will also aim for carbon neutrality by making full use of renewable energies, like geothermal, hy- droelectric, and solar power.