Happy New Year

The last year proved to be a year which Japanese industrial world has never experienced so far.
Since the economic circumstances here in Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake has been forced to suffer from the six pains, i.e. Power supply deficiency, Radio-active contamination, Resources shortage, Political stagnation, High Yen-rate and High corporation tax, we cannot help feeling a crisis.

Especially for the material industry the future prospect remains uncertain due to the domestic business stagnation and the export inactivity.
The small and medium enterprises are still seized by the blockade as if they were being killed slowly with velvet paw, though some of the big enterprises, who still have fund to spare, are busying themselves with overseas corporate acquisition.

From a historical view, the advance abroad of Japanese enterprises (Hollowing-out) is the third time since the one in the early seventies following Oil Crisis and the one in the late eighties following Plaza Accord. The difference from the two past ones, however, is the fact that, not only being engaged in local production and local consumption in foreign countries (especially in China), they have newly developed products and let them flow back to Japan, which has been becoming the pressure onto the domestic industry here in Japan.

I don’t think that there is any other way for the Japanese industries but still study overseas operation in order to cope with this crisis, without doing anything to wait for death. The phenomena is now prevailing that, because the domestic production would cut into the cost, the enterprises obtain profits from their overseas operation and  apply them to the preservation of labor and the development of new products. This is a kind of operational judgment for an individual enterprise to survive the international competition.

We Advanced Material Japan (AMJ) has been aiming at the concept of “Creation of New Value” as a rare metal trading house and a new venture firm, and now AMJ is answering its own questions of what we can do to fight the national crisis.
We established AMJ in January, 2004. and AMJ has been favorably growing up till 2011, encountering Financial Crisis.　We have been pursuing the diversification of our own resources through the stable preservation of rare metal resources and the deal of processing trade in a critical situation of rising resource inflation.

I foresee that 2012 will be a year when Japanese material industry is tested in the point of how to survive. Japanese rare metal users are accelerating their speed to advance abroad based on their operational judgment. Japanese material industry has the strongest competitive power in the world. They have stayed, however, rather in their idea of repeating their past successful experiences, and lacked a challenging spirit. I have got intuition that Japan, after the Great East Japan Earthquake, has begun to hold a challenging spirit to seek for a new paradigm.

Don’t you think that the recovery from the great earthquake will give us a chance to check again all of the production, the physical distribution, the energy and the information which compose Japanese economic system, that is, material industry, device industry and system material industry? Of course, the distance from zero to the reconstruction will be extremely far as if it made you faint away. As all the past changes here in Japan has been partial and lacked basic scheme, it will be a good opportunity to re-design a new Japan fundamentally.

AMJ’s undertaking so far has been the contribution to Japanese domestic market by insuring rare metal resources (= mine development ) with a sense of duty,  overcoming the structural resource inflation. From this year we think we shall further globalize ourselves, keeping pace with Japanese material industry which is enlarging and diversifying in overseas advance. To be specific, we are establishing a local subsidiary in China and building up strongholds in Singapore and Vietnam to correspond with production in ASEAN.

Environmental issue has been becoming more serious simultaneously with resources issue. Japan has a strong point in consecutive technology of environmental conservation. That is, since resources issue and environmental issue are the most important matter that mankind has to solve with united efforts, we think we shall contribute not only to the domestic market but to the overseas market with a long term point of view.

In that sense, we think it necessary to pay attention to the environment in overseas mines and smelting plants while we support IT industry and new material industry.
We, having made efforts to contribute mainly to Japanese industry so far, will develop our visual point of “Idea from Harmony to Co-existence” to overseas, too.
It is important for Japan as a country of technology to contribute like a leader of the world how effectively and balanceable it uses its precious rare metal resources. What AMJ should do from now on will be ”Harmonization and Co-existence of Resources development and Environmental Conservation” Although it is our duty to help Japan, a country of technology, keep necessary rare metal resources stable, to advance one more step, it is indispensable for our country to prosper and make the worldwide contribution that we harmonize with the nature’s bounty in the spots of the resources development in the world and co- exist with rare metal producing countries.

The traders of AMJ are going around into the interior of China, into the desert of Central Asia and into the utmost end of Africa today, too. It is our role that we achieve the stable supply of rare metal resources to help Japan’s great recovery, making full use of AMJ’s philosophy, vision and policy, while we propel the harmonization and co-existence with countries where there are resources.
    

President of AMJ                                                              
Shigeo Nakamura

January 3, 2012