Nicca Chemicals Will Be The No.1 Textile Chemicals Supplier In Asia

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Nicca Chemicals Will Be The No.1 Textile Chemicals Supplier In Asia

Alongwith finding success in eight countries outside Japan, a shift from textile chemicals toward automotive fabrics has enabled resilient Nicca Chemical to make a name for itself in the US too. President Yasumasa Emori explains where the company is heading next and what's behind the past decade of impressive results it has posted.

This year Nicca Chemical is celebrating its 75th anniversary with aggressive investment and impressive business growth: from 2006 to 2015 business has grown over 40%. Explains Emori, "It is partly thanks to the policies of Prime Minister Abe, whom I thank very much. We were facing several problems: a strong yen, corporate tax problems, oil prices going up… Since the Abe administration started, these problems have reduced. The yen value is very favourable for us. The cosmetics division has grown 150% and our chemical products sales have grown 30%. We have been focusing on creating a strategy for our chemical division, more directed towards textile chemicals. We aim to be the number one textile chemical company in Asia."

Nicca is one of the top suppliers of Japan, especially of innovative textile chemicals. The company is currently working with fluorine-free water repellants. Usually fluorine-based water repellants are widely used; however, some environmental organisations are saying the fluorine-based products are not environmentally friendly. "All the big names like Puma, Adidas and Uniqlo have followed this opinion and decided not to use it. We have developed a non-fluorinated product for water repelling. 80% of the product is made from plants and plant-related material, however, it has the best performance in the world. This high-spec product has attracted the attention at ISPO, which is the biggest exhibition of outdoor, sports apparel and goods in the world," informed Emori.

Nicca Chemicals is strongly focused towards minimising its environmental impact. One such effort is the under construction new innovation centre, which works on the green building concept. "When creating our products, we make an effort to use plant-based materials rather than petroleum-based materials that are usually used. We have also determined our environment impact, for instance, by measuring the amount of water being used to create products. We have our own internal standards that we consider to be environmentally net positive. For example, to be able to dye one kilogram of textile material, it takes about 100 kilograms of water. We have been able to reduce that by 50%, and we are working to reduce it further by 70%," said Emori.

Asia remains the largest market for Nicca Chemicals, as 80% of textiles are produced in Asia. In the Asian market, 80% of that is produced in China. This could change due to the problems that China faces, such as environmental problems. "Recently the fastest growing country is Vietnam, which is a member country of the TPP agreement with high quality labour. The sewing process may be shifted to Cambodia or Myanmar, but we expect Vietnam to continue to grow as it has readily available infrastructure for the dyeing process."