October, 2009 - Tosoh America, Inc., Is 20 Years Old and Going Strong

Let’s start by looking at Tosoh America’s history with a review of the strategic objectives that pushed Tosoh beyond the borders of Japan about 45 years ago. The key word here is globalization. As overused and abused as this term is the quest to globalize is what drove Tosoh to set up shop abroad. 

Globalization in the 1960s represented a dream to surpass limits on expansion and growth domestically. Japan’s markets were rapidly maturing even 40 years ago, and the limits to growth at home were obvious. At the same time, markets, products, and technologies were going global. So it was only logical for Tosoh to set up manufacturing and sales bases outside Japan. What’s more, by going directly to the sources of its raw materials, the company could minimize costs and access new technologies and fields. 

In 1964, Madoka Tashiro, who would go on to become a 53-year veteran of Tosoh and Tosoh Corporations's chairman and CEO from 2001 to 2009, opened the company’s first overseas office. That office, in New York, was the start of a 40-year period of expansion by the company.

Tosoh expansion in the 1970s involved establishing bases of operations overseas that we could use to transfer Tosoh products and technologies to markets globally. The 1980s saw us engage in some mergers and acquisitions and equity participations, chiefly to increase the scope of our specialties business. In the 1990s, we invested heavily in our roots in commodities and in moving deeper elsewhere in Asia, all the while continuing to strengthen and expand our specialty markets. The present decade has seen some of our businesses come full circle. Divestments have become as much a part of our development as the understanding that globalization is our ticket to the best-possible future. Tosoh remains more committed than ever to expanding internationally, in, however, selected areas of strength.

Much of our international growth has been based more on opportunity than a grand plan. Tosoh has grown one company at a time either by investing in companies that augment its product lines or by establishing trading companies to sell in markets abroad Tosoh products made in Japan. 

By 1989, for example, Tosoh had accumulated a good number of subsidiaries in North America, and it established Tosoh America in that year to function as a holding company for certain of those subsidiaries. Later, in 2001, Tosoh America’s role was enlarged as a regional headquarters and a service platform for operations in North America. The model was to concentrate services and administration in one location and to then share those offerings with group companies all over the continent.

Tosoh America today provides human resources, information technology, and accounting support to a diverse group of companies from its base in Grove City, Ohio. Its subsidiaries include manufacturing and distribution operations involved in the sale of a varied array of products sold to the semiconductor, solar, chemical, pharmaceutical, and medical industries.

Years of accumulated expertise in providing services to so many different subsidiaries eventually enabled Tosoh America to benefit Tosoh’s group companies in Europe. And now Tosoh America’s consulting services extend worldwide. The company’s IT department, for instance, manages almost the entire Tosoh Web presence for group companies from Tosoh (Shanghai) to Tosoh’s European subsidiaries and, of course, for all Tosoh group companies in the United States.

A principal contributor to Tosoh America’s success has been its ability to retain employees over the long term. This has resulted in a solid team of employees who individually and collectively are accumulations of expert knowledge in specific service areas for Tosoh. These living databases are invaluable to Tosoh’s success to date and to its success in future through what they offer in the way of building key service platforms. 

As Tosoh America marks its 20th anniversary, it stands tall on the Tosoh landscape. A team of approximately 50 employees help Tosoh America oversee and support the Tosoh Group in North America.