YKK AP Targets Higher Offshore Sales for Construction Materials

YKK AP targets 70 billion yen of offshore sales for the construction materials in 4 years, which is 20 billion yen higher than the year ending March 2009, under next 4-year plan starting April 2009. The firm tries to shuffle the domestic production sites of construction materials. The president Tadahiro Yoshida said to press reporters the firm already started to cut temporally staff reducing 2,000 of temporally staff from October 2007 to March 2009 while the firm will keep regular staff. He indicates additional job cut to improve the profitability under the slow demand.

The firm restructures domestic construction materials business including plants consolidation while the firm improves the marketing force and logistics. The firm keeps going construction of new plant in Saitama but the firm seeks optimum operation including distribution.

The firm cleared target of 50 billion yen of annual sales for the offshore construction materials in fiscal 2007 one year ahead of original timetable. The firm expands the sales to 70 billion yen in 4 years by expanding the sales to 25 billion yen in USA, 15 billion yen in China and 30 billion yen in other areas compared with 20 billion yen, 10 billion yen and 20 billion yen respectively in fiscal 2007.