Toray Advanced Materials Chairman & CEO Lee Young-kwan, in his New Year’s message, called for structural management reform to survive the latest crisis and build an infrastructure for a leap forward.
Looking back at last year, he said, “The global economy was caught up in a whirling vortex of chaos such as the slow recovery of advanced economies and lower growth rates of emerging economies, including China, declining crude oil prices, and foreign exchange fluctuations, and the Korean economy had the hard times with the burden of a low yen and dropping competitiveness of its mainstay industries amidst fears of deflation.”
Chairman Lee predicted this year’s business conditions are as difficult as last year’s. “This year is faced with financial markets uncertainties, China’s economic reform, raw material prices and trading environment changes, and each country’s unpredictable strategic interests and impacts,” he said. Lee said, “The nation is feared to show signs of structural economic recession such as acceleration of deflation with low growth and low prices, and exacerbation of export competitiveness, caused by foreign exchange risks and China risks.”
“Despite the difficult situation, Toray Advanced Materials acquired Toray Chemical, dedicated a plant capable of producing polyphenylenesulfide (PPS) resin in Gunsan, and strengthened its overseas business presence by ramping up production capacity of Toray Polytech (Nantong) Co. in China (TPN) and Toray Polytech Jakarta (TPJ), and spared no efforts to maintain growth by investing into Gumi 5 Industrial Complex,” he said.
As to the latest crisis, he stressed structural reform to survive and overcome the crisis. “Whoever seizes up a golden time and succeed in reform, he or she will make a leap forward, but if anyone disregards and goes against the trends, he or she will be left behind forever. This is the reason Chairman Lee set this year as a year for building a platform for resurge through structural management reform.
To this end, Lee expounded top four management tenets — expanding marginal profits through revamping; accelerating the implementation of mid- and long-term growth strategies, maintaining corporate core values in a thorough manner, and ramping social responsibility activities.
In order to strengthen its fundamentals, Lee said, Toray Advanced Materials plans to maximize profits by establishing a close collaboration system among sales, production and research departments to ensure the timely supply of products meant to meet customers’ demand as well as developing new products and selling value added items.
As to mid- and long-term growth strategies, he said, his company will ramp up supply capacity by expanding facilities in the carbon textile composite materials business while aggressively making inroads into upstream and downstream industries and nurturing strategically linked business areas. Toray Advanced Materials will strengthen collaboration with the Gyeongsangbuk-do carbon fiber composite materials cluster at the Gumi 5 Industrial Complex, he said.
Lee said Toray Advanced Materials plans to advance the dedication of plants in the resin chemical business, a key future industry, while striving to make an inroad into the Chinese film fabrication industry.
He concluded his message by saying that evolution and extinction is meant to be determined by a crisis, and those who survive are the strong.
Meanwhile, Toray Advanced Materials held a ceremony to embark on the new year at the Gumi plant on Jan. 5 and its headquarters on Jan. 6.
