Kansai Paint’s Future
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For more than a century since its founding in 1918, Kansai Paint has continued to grow while taking on various challenges, and while the business environment has undergone bewildering changes over the past several years, as a business enterprise we must reconsider the fundamental values of our reason for being and what we must do to both survive and thrive.
Throughout history, paints and coatings have supported progress and sustainability. Our reason for being and our pursuit of future growth both to some degree rely on our remarkable human resources, who put paints, coatings, and the technologies learned and discovered from our work with paint and coatings to use in tackling challenges, drawing on the founding spirit passed down from our predecessors.
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A history of more than a century of growth and tackling challenges
- Kansai Paint has grown through its long history of more than 100 years while navigating a succession of challenges, and to keep growing into the future we will undoubtedly have to surmount more.
Since its founding in 1918, Kansai Paint has overcome numerous difficulties. It is our experience turning difficulties into growth opportunities that has made Kansai Paint the outstanding company it is today. Looking back, we first ventured into overseas markets in the 1950s. Later, as we tackled the challenges of the auto industry, we rose to the status of a global enterprise as we grew internationally alongside our automaker customers. In the 1980s, we entered the India market, where considerable future growth appears inevitable; today, our activities in this market over four decades are one of our key growth engines. We have progressed rapidly to become one of the world's leading coatings makers not merely by overcoming global economic shocks, like the 2008 financial crises, but by growing our business scale, territories, and portfolio through accelerated overseas business development.
Paints and coatings have supported human progress.
Viewing both the present and the future, one could say that we are currently in the midst of a global maelstrom, one that equals or exceeds the major inflection points that have left their imprint on Kansai Paint's History. This era is marked by global warming, progressive polarization of world economies, constant conflicts and wars, and natural disasters worldwide. Under these circumstances, we as a business enterprise must reconsider our fundamental values: our reasons for being and what we must do to survive and thrive.
- Paints and coatings, a target of our main line of business, have existed in some form since prehistoric times, providing protection for various objects. In addition, as seen in ancient murals preserved to this day, paints and coatings are an essential part of human activities, playing vital roles in communication and creative expression. Put another way, this is a vital livelihood that has supported humanity's progress and sustainability behind the scenes.
Leveraging such essential coatings and the technologies learned and discovered through them to deliver solutions to today's challenges is Kansai Paint's reason for being and its social responsibility.
From Good to Great
- Moving forward, Kansai Paint will confront society's challenges, using as milestones our announced materiality topics and KPIs for 2030. Kansai Paint will deliver products that protect and improve the environment through their mere use. In this way, we will become a company that contributes to greater happiness among people worldwide. We believe that to be a company that continues to address society's tough challenges, we must innovate and reform ourselves without being resting on our laurels. Kansai Paint has formulated a Good to Great growth strategy and is putting into practice the 16th and 17th Medium-term Management Plans and practical reform initiatives, thereby moving toward its long-term goals.
In its storied history of more than 100 years, Kansai Paint has grown while tackling various new challenges. We will achieve sustained growth by continuing to tackle new challenges in the future as well. Through continuous innovations, Kansai Paint has grown steadily stronger, developed a highly capable corps of human resources, built robust management foundations, and improved its financial results. The pace and strength of our innovations must keep rising as we head into the future.
Things that must never change
Beyond the history of reform and innovation reviewed up to this point, some things must remain constant. Our founding goal of balancing profit with fairness and our philosophy of valuing human resources above all—the soul of Kansai Paint—must remain in place. These fundamental corporate beliefs have driven Kansai Paint's growth and made it possible for us to tackle challenges with the goodwill and trust of our customers and stakeholders. These beliefs are still more reason this Kansai Paint culture must survive. They also matter from an internal perspective: Both the Company and our employees can grow by keeping in our hearts the words of our founder Katsujiro Iwai, as caring employees freely express their opinions regardless of their positions in the organization, based on mutual respect.
Kansai Paint is also active in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), through which companies around the world choose to join with Kansai Paint above other prospective partners. Balancing profit with fairness is an important value that Kansai Paint aims to spread around a world that faces numerous difficult challenges.
Kansai Paint’s Future
For more than a century, we have been an organization needed by and relied on by the world. We have continued to reward such expectations. Things needed and expected change with the times, and turning change into opportunity and broadening the fields in which we contribute to society, we will continue to work as one to tackle new challenges, bringing together the collective wisdom of Kansai Paint's human resources.
Kansai Paint has a wealth of outstanding human resources, not just in Japan but worldwide. We will continue to hire and promote remarkable human resources who combine ability with character.
Our remarkable human resources will boldly take on society's challenges from a solid footing in the essential industry of coatings, drawing on the spirit passed down since our founding. We will continue to contribute to the survival of the planet and the human race and to create products that delight an ever growing base of customers and end users.
This is the meaning of Kansai Paint's existence and why we will continue to grow.
We ask you to continue to look forward to achievements that are still to come.
If you would like to know more about Kansai Paint
See below for our Management Policy, financial highlights, and various documents.
Kansai Paint supports progress for people and society as an essential presence in society.
