Happy New Year, everybody! My heartfelt thanks for the great consideration you showed us during last year. I would like to offer some comments at the start of 2017.

Looking back at 2016, circumstances such as the United Kingdom’s statement of its intention to leave the European Union and the outcome of the presidential election in the United States indicate that we are entering a period of social and economic structural change quite unlike anything before. Meanwhile, in the Japanese economy, domestic demand including personal consumption continue to lack firm power for growth. I expect this year also to be one of upheaval, and strongly believe that we must respond to this trend flexibly, resolutely, and rapidly.

Ever since our founding, Fuji Oil has focused on vegetable oils and fats and soy beans, built ties of trust with our customers over many years, and made full use of those ties and our both diverse and original technology in developing products adapted to changes in the market. Through this development, we have progressed together with our customers.
Our reason for being and mission are contribution to people’s food and health. By pursuing delicious and healthy foods, we are taking a hand in the creation of a new food culture.
We are committed to business activities as a partner that discerns the nature of the value which each customers is seeking, creates that value with the customer, and assists the customer’s growth. For this purpose as well, we must make an all-out, Group-wide effort to “Kotozukuri” (creating movements) enabling us to see the consumers beyond our customers, provide a higher order of value, and make an all-out, deliver deep gratification.

Viewing things from the perspective of “delicious and healthy,” we attach particular importance to proposing and developing food ingredients that benefit human health and taste good, too. Last year, we managed to bring into the market new products including chocolate for the health-conscious and oils and fats effective for reduction of salt intake.
I might add that, last June, we made a presentation on highly stable DHA and EPA ingredients at the press conference. This year, we are going to strive for the commercialization of products around them in the hope of their wider diffusion in the market.

Last summer, we opened the Fuji Science and Innovation Center in a facility in Fuji Oil Co, Ltd.. This new center will function as a venue for generating innovation by fusing knowledge and technology inside and outside the Fuji Oil Group. In addition to the store of technology we have accumulated so far for development of materials and application development of products, we are going to make approaches to "Kotozukuri" (creating movements) proposals for value creation and actively take up the challenge of expanding our business in new domains.

We are determined to mount a concerted Group-wide effort toward our aspiration of being an enterprise that is trusted and preferred by customers.

I fervently hope that we will continue to deserve your patronage of Fuji Oil Group products again this year.

Minoru Kimoto
President
January 1st, 2017