Country Business Reports interviews and articles by Discovery Reports

Realising the vision of a safer, healthier and more sustainable world is a necessity in the era of climate change. Japan’s Sumitomo Seika Chemicals is doing its fair share by accelerating its green chemistry development over the next 10 years in line with its commitment to meet society’s needs through five core technologies.

“We strive to be indispensable to customers worldwide by being a function creator,” says Tetsuya Miyamoto, director, managing executive officer and chief of Sumitomo Seika’s functional chemicals sector. “Enthusiasm is our greatest driving force, especially with our division seeking to create the future value for society in the fields of personal care, environment, medical care, electronic materials and energy.”

An entire division focused on manufacturing and selling water-soluble polymers, polymer beads, emulsion, latex and functional materials, the sector creates tremendous impact with sustainable high functionality. For instance, it is reformulating aqueous emulsions and powder coatings to be eco-friendly and free of organic solvents. In personal care, it developed a thickener for smoother cosmetics that won awards at the North America and Paris exhibitions of in-cosmetics over the past two years. In the pipeline, there are low electric permittivity polymers and high-performance binders designed to address the transmission loss issue in 5G network deployment and to improve the lifecycle of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.