Dowa Mining Prepares for 5 Companies in April

Dowa Mining will transfer its management setup to the 5 companies of refinery, electric material, metal processing, environmental recycling and heat treatment from April as it established Electronics & Metal Processing Company through merge of Segments of Electronic Materials and Metal Processing in 2002. Dowa aims at the sales in fiscal 2008 at 100 billion yen and the ordinary profit in the fiscal year at 15 billion yen. Since about 70% of demand of connectors, which is the main products in the Segment of Metal Processing, is for cars, Dowa aimed at total supply of parts and other products to the car market whose promotion of electric systematization is outstanding. Throughout Dowa’s business to that market, there was the effect of market expansion of its coating business, whose main demand had been mainly for electric materials. So Dowa will transfer the Segment of Metal Processing to the coating business next month. Then, Dowa will perform business development as Metal Processing Company whose main products will be copper alloy strips of Dowa Metal, the manufacturing subsidiary in Shizuoka Prefecture in Central Japan, and ceramic circuit boards in the Shiojiri Works, Negano Prefecture, Central Japan. Dowa will aggressively perform investment of its coating business in the future. Dowa Hightech, its manufacturing base of coated products in Saitama Prefecture, Eastern Japan, starts increase of the equipment to deal with all orders from its customers. Further, the Shiojiri Works became in the black because there was adoption of ceramic circuit boards to cars one after another. As for electric material production, Dowa’s Electronics Materials Company will expand its business of semiconductor to that of infrared light-emitting diode (LED) and hospital-use sensor, etc. In addition, the company will aggressively perform investment to nitride semiconductor. The company will sell extensively the silver powder and indium oxide whose demand tends to increase for flat panel display (FPD) in the electric material business. Regarding the magnetic material business, it plans to heighten the added value of metal powder through its use of backup of computer. Furthermore, the company will perform its placing on the market of its new products and launch its new business as soon as possible.