Denka Company Limited has decided to conduct joint research with Transform Materials LLC, a global microwave plasma technology provider, to establish its technology for realizing the low-carbon production of acetylene. The signing ceremony was held on May 23, 2023.

 

Under our eight-year management plan Mission 2030, which started in fiscal 2023, we aim to achieve 100% of our businesses being "three-star businesses" with the three elements of specialty, megatrends, and sustainability. In addition, as one of our non-financial KPIs, we have also set the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 60% by 2030 (compared to fiscal 2013), and are proceeding with the transformation of our portfolio by establishing a low-carbon acetylene chain.

 

Transform Materials, the company with which we have concluded this agreement, is a private equity backed company based in the United States that owns technology for producing acetylene and hydrogen from methane (and other gaseous hydrocarbons) using microwave plasma reactors. The technology of Transform Materials not only contributes to the reduction of CO2 emissions from our mainstay products such as chloroprene rubber and acetylene black produced from the existing acetylene chain made from carbide, but also has the potential to create new initiatives that contribute to carbon neutrality by utilizing the by-product hydrogen. This is the reason why we have decided to enter into this agreement. We will install acetylene and hydrogen production equipment based on this technology at our Omuta Plant to demonstrate and optimize the technology to realize the large-scale mass production of acetylene.

 

In addition, we plan to make environmental investments totaling 85 billion yen over the eight years up to 2030. We will continue to push forward with various sustainability-related initiatives, both in Japan and overseas, toward the achievement of carbon neutrality in 2050.