Sumitomo Chemical held a construction completion ceremony at its new research facility Innovation Center MEGURU (MEGURU) at its Chiba site located in Sodegaura City, Chiba, Japan, on June 26, 2024.

Operations at MEGURU then began the same day. This research facility has been opened to consolidate and strengthen the Company’s research groups developing technologies for reducing environmental impact at its Chiba site. The Company will further accelerate the development of technologies and materials that contribute to environmental impact reduction and seek to create new value through these solutions.

The Chiba site has been the research and manufacturing center of Sumitomo Chemical’s petrochemicals business. It has offered polymer design, catalyst, process, compound and processing technologies while also providing pilot facilities to scale new technologies for commercialization. Building on the technological resources and infrastructure at the site, Sumitomo Chemical will strive to create innovative technologies at MEGURU that help lessen environmental impact, including chemical recycling and material recycling technologies, and to establish them not only in Japan, but also globally.

Sumitomo Chemical will also transfer and consolidate the personnel for polymer research, super engineering plastics, functional chemicals and other products located in the Tsukuba and Osaka sites to MEGURU in the Chiba site, the hub of the Company’s polymer materials research and development. Through this reorganization, the Company will establish a system that can further strengthen internal and external collaboration, and thereby speed up the development of innovative new materials, such as those for next-generation mobility applications and high-speed mobile communication systems.