January 27, 2010

Expansion of the Cod Roe Business

Establishing a wholly owned subsidiary Hakata Marukita Suisan Co.,Ltd. (*1) (Representative Director & President – Nobuo Honda) on December 7, 2009, Nippon Suisan Kaisha, Ltd. (hereinafter "Nissui"; Representative Board Member, President & CEO – Naoya Kakizoe) has been preparing for the acquisition of business from Hakata Marukita Co., Ltd. which is in the process of civil rehabilitation. This is to report that the request filed by Hakata Marukita Co., Ltd. for permission to sell its business was approved by the Hakata District Court on January 20, 2010.
Hakata Marukita Suisan Co.,Ltd. will purchase Hakata Marukita’s business for 500 million yen, including the land and buildings at its three plant locations (Head Office, Chikko, Koga) as well as its registered trademarks, such as "Hakata Ago'otoshi," and take in all of Hakata Marukita's employees as a general rule. Hakata Marukita Suisan Co.,Ltd. will commence business operations, deeming February 1 to be the acquisition date.

As regards the cod roe business, it is hereby also reported that a decision has been made to designate (*2) Tokyo Kitaichi Co., Ltd. (Representative Director & President – Shigekazu Watanabe) as an equity method affiliate of Nissui, accepting a third-party allocation of new shares of the company (260 shares; approximately 70 million yen) before the end of February 2010. Nissui, which has had a business relationship with the company since 1990 supplying raw fish roe, is accepting new shares to be issued to raise funds for the extension and alteration of the company's plant in Hokkaido schedule to begin in April.

A strength of the Nissui Group has been its resource access to Alaska pollack, which serves as a raw material for fish paste (surimi) products, fish ham and fish sausages, and the Group has been building a vertically-integrated business structure for white fish, encompassing everything from resources to the final product. By adding the product line-up, processing technologies, and brand values of each of Hakata Marukita Suisan Co.,Ltd. and Tokyo Kitaichi Co., Ltd. to Nissui's cod roe business, it will be possible to achieve synergy with the current processing functions in China and Nissui's Hachioji General Plant in order to realize the transformation of the business from a business focusing on raw roe to that focusing on processing. Moving forward, Nissui will begin launching products achieved by leveraging these functions in overseas market as well, with the aim of expanding and increasing the profitability of the cod roe business overall.
These investment in (incorporation into the Group of) cod roe processing and sales companies are based on the Nissui Group management strategy of maximizing the Group's synergy by strengthening the vertically-integrated business structure and enhancing Local Links and Global Links functions in order to "convert marine resources into customer values" pursuant to the policy outlined in the Medium-Term Management Plan (the New TGL Plan: FY2006 ∼ FY2011), which began in FY2006.

(*1) (Overview of Hakata Marukita Suisan Co.,Ltd.)

(*2) (Overview of Tokyo Kitaichi Co., Ltd.)