Kuraray - Company History

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Financial history 1952–2025 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1926
Founder Ohara Magosaburo
Founding location 岡山県倉敷市
Core business at founding Manufacture and sale of rayon
Listed 1933
President Kawahara Hitoshi President since 2021 (age 64, as of 2026)
Current priority Selection and concentration · Earnings recovery Shrinking the isoprene business and restoring the profitability of activated carbon
Founding
In June 1926 Ohara Magosaburo, president of the cotton spinner Kurashiki Boseki, established a subsidiary, Kurashiki Kenshoku, with capital of ¥10 million and took the presidency of it himself. The purpose was to make a business of rayon, and after bringing in technology from France and running a joint research programme with Kyoto University the company entered commercial production at its Kurashiki mill in May 1928. It listed on both the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges in November 1933, and by 1936 had secured its footing as a rayon specialist with four plants, Saijo and Okayama among them. During the Pacific War the plants were turned over to munitions work, but the company resumed man-made fibre production promptly after the war and made a fresh start in April 1949 under the name Kurashiki Rayon.
The Decision
It has chosen its new businesses by a rule that keeps it away from anything most people approve of. Ohara Soichiro, the second president, said that a new line of work should be started when only one or two people in ten are in favour, and that by the time five agree it is already too late. In November 1950 the company took vinylon, a synthetic fibre built on domestic technology, into industrial production. At first neither the handle nor the dyeability opened a market, and only with the high-tenacity grade of 1954 did the uses widen into fishing nets, rope and cement reinforcement; in 1956 the industry still spoke of it as the president's hobby. Poval by the natural-gas route followed in 1962, the man-made leather Clarino in 1964 and the gas-barrier resin EVAL in 1972, every one of them out of the company's own laboratories. In February 2001 it halted rayon production and at the same time bought the poval and PVB businesses from Clariant, gaining European production sites in the very year it stopped the founding trade it had carried on for 75 years.
Today
The profit of a single segment is larger than the operating profit of the whole company. Of consolidated sales of $5.4B (¥808bn) in the year to December 2025, vinyl acetate accounted for $2.6B (¥387bn), and its segment profit of $417.6M (¥63bn) exceeded company-wide operating profit of $392.9M (¥59bn). EVAL, water-soluble film and PVB, all derived from poval, sit in that segment. Functional materials, which gained the US activated carbon maker Calgon Carbon in the acquisition of 2018, had sales of $1.4B (¥202bn) and profit of $72.2M (¥11bn); isoprene, the synthetic rubber business, posted a loss of $32.1M (¥5bn) as Chinese producers added capacity and the market softened; and fibres came to no more than $375.5M (¥56bn) in sales and $17.4M (¥3bn) in profit. The structure in which one business absorbs the losses and the thin margins of the other three has not changed since the year to December 2017.
Competition
It has picked its businesses not by the size of the market but by whether it could make the feedstock itself. Against Toray and Teijin, which in 1957 took the patents of ICI of Britain and went for volume production of polyester for clothing, Kurashiki Rayon widened its own vinylon — made from limestone, coal and water — into industrial materials. Where Toray commercialised the carbon fibre Torayca and inherited the losses that ran with it for some forty years, Kuraray took the opposite route, processing its own poval resin at its own film plants, and holds first place in the world in both water-soluble film and interlayers for laminated glass. In 1994 it set out a diversification that would not compete on scale in commodity fibres. Yet while it stacked up leading positions in narrow markets through a chain it made itself from the feedstock up, its third source of earnings was bought in from outside for $1.1B (¥123bn).

Timeline

1926–1989From vinylon to EVAL — proprietary materials, one after another

  1. 1926Kurashiki Kenshoku established with ¥10m capital by Ohara Magosaburo
  2. 1928The Kurashiki mill starts up; commercial rayon production begins
  3. 1933Listed on the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges
  4. 1936The Saijo and Okayama plants start operating
  5. 1940Chugoku Sangyo (中国産業) established
  6. 1949Renamed Kurashiki Rayon; listing resumes as the exchanges reopen
  7. 1950Vinylon production begins at the Okayama plant
  8. 1956The Tamashima plant starts operating
  9. 1962The Nakajo plant starts up, making poval from natural gas
  10. 1964Clarino man-made leather goes into production at Kurashiki
  11. 1968The Central Research Laboratories are founded
  12. 1970Renamed Kuraray Co., Ltd.
  13. 1972EVAL production begins at Okayama; the Kashima plant starts up
  14. 1976Isoprene derivatives go into production at Nakajo
  15. 1984Nippon Velcro absorbed by merger
  16. 1989Kyowa Gas Chemical Industry absorbed by merger

1990–2017The leap into a global functional-materials maker

  1. 1991Kuraray Europe GmbH established as the European headquarters
  2. 1994Under “rhizome management”, non-fibre businesses supply 80% of recurring profit
  3. 1994The Tsukuba Research Laboratories are founded
  4. 1997EVAL Europe N.V. is built in Belgium
  5. 1999EVAL resin production starts at EVAL Europe, completing the three-region system
  6. 1999Genestar heat-resistant polyamide resin goes into production at Saijo
  7. 2001Rayon production is halted after 75 years
  8. 2001The poval and PVB businesses are bought from Clariant AG of Switzerland
  9. 2003A management advisory council is created and an executive officer system introduced
  10. 2004The PVB film business is acquired from HT Troplast AG of Germany
  11. 2006Exit from optical screens for rear-projection televisions
  12. 2012MonoSol Holdings acquired for about US$395m
  13. 2014DuPont’s vinyl acetate businesses acquired for about $612.2M (¥65bn)
  14. 2015Plantic Technologies and its subsidiaries acquired
  15. 2017Record year: sales $4.6B (¥518bn), operating margin 14.5%

2018–2022The light and shadow of acquisition — a US accident, and reform set in motion

  1. 2018Calgon Carbon Corporation acquired for about $1.1B (¥123bn)
  2. 2018Explosion and fire at the Kuraray America EVAL plant injures 266 people
  3. 2018Functional materials sales double to $1.0B (¥112bn); group sales $5.5B (¥603bn)
  4. 2018Interest-bearing debt rises to $2.0B (¥217bn); equity ratio falls to 58.6%
  5. 2019Litigation loss of $464.2M (¥51bn) pushes the group to a net loss
  6. 2020A further $216.3M (¥23bn) litigation loss; operating profit falls to $414.9M (¥44bn)
  7. 2021Recovery: sales $5.7B (¥629bn), operating profit $658.6M (¥72bn)
  8. 2022Record year: sales $5.8B (¥756bn), operating margin 11.5%
  9. 2022The trading segment is folded into the individual business segments
  10. 2022Moves to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  11. 2022PASSION 2026 raises the operating-profit target to $837.3M (¥110bn)

Founding Story

1926–1989From vinylon to EVAL — proprietary materials, one after another

The six decades from the founding trace the arc from a rayon subsidiary set up in Kurashiki to a materials company standing on four franchises of its own making — vinylon, Clarino, EVAL and isoprene — with sales rising from $30.8M (¥11bn) in 1952 to $867M (¥207bn) by 1985. Every one of those franchises came out of the company’s own laboratories rather than a licence, and that habit of refusing to buy technology would go on to decide both what Kuraray could earn and where it could never go.

A man-made fibre maker born out of Kurashiki Boseki

In 1926 Ohara Magosaburo (大原孫三郎), president of the cotton spinner Kurashiki Boseki (倉敷紡績, today Kurabo Industries)[1], saw a future in the man-made fibre rayon, put up ¥10 million of capital to establish a subsidiary, Kurashiki Kenshoku Co., Ltd. (倉敷絹織)[2], and took the presidency of it himself[3]. After bringing in technology from France and running a joint research programme with Kyoto University[4], the company began commercial rayon production at its Kurashiki mill in 1928 and moved into full supply of the domestic market[5]. By 1936 it operated four plants, Saijo and Okayama among them[6], and had secured its footing as a rayon specialist. During the Pacific War the plants were turned over to munitions work[7], but the company resumed man-made fibre production promptly after the war and made a fresh start in 1949 under a new name, Kurashiki Rayon Co., Ltd.[8] The industrial base the Ohara family had built up in Kurashiki, and the spirit of creation carried down from the founding, were the origin of the bent for proprietary technology that came later[9].

What defined the company after the war was the industrialisation of vinylon, a synthetic fibre made with wholly domestic technology. Vinylon — whose feedstocks are limestone, coal and water, all of them available at home[10] — was developed on the basis of research by Sakurada Ichiro (桜田一郎) of Kyoto University and others; production started at the Okayama plant in 1950[11], making it the first synthetic fibre in Japan built on the country’s own technology. Opening a market was extremely hard at first because of the fibre’s handle and its poor dyeability, but once a high-tenacity grade was successfully developed in 1954[12] its uses spread into industrial materials such as fishing nets, rope and cement reinforcement, and it became the material that stood for the company’s technical strength. The success of vinylon stamped on Kurashiki Rayon’s corporate culture a single value: proprietary technology that copies no one.

Building the core businesses — Clarino, EVAL and isoprene

In the 1960s the company changed course towards a diversification that would not stop at fibres. In 1962 it brought on stream a poval plant at Nakajo in Niigata Prefecture, using natural gas as its feedstock[13], and laid the foundation of its chemicals business. In 1964 it began producing Clarino[14], a man-made leather built on its own technology, whose handle approached natural leather and whose lightness surprised the market. With several companies including DuPont of the United States competing to enter the field, Kurashiki Rayon held first place through the superiority of its quality and aggressive marketing[15], and took a high market share in applications led by the randoseru (ランドセル, the Japanese school satchel). Clarino grew into the brand that became the company’s public face and the axis of its diversification strategy. The combination of poval and Clarino was the first foothold out of dependence on fibres, and it became the earnings source that funded the development of new materials thereafter.

In 1972 the company began production at the Okayama plant of EVAL, a gas-barrier resin that came out of applying its poval technology[16]. EVAL, which brought a step change in the gas-barrier performance of food packaging materials, would later grow into Kuraray’s largest source of earnings. In the same year it also started making polyisoprene rubber at the Kashima plant[17], entering the isoprene chemicals field in earnest. That its proprietary core businesses — vinylon, Clarino, EVAL and isoprene — were launched one after another between the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s laid the foundation for the later leap into a global functional-materials maker. This continuous development of new materials is the emblem of a corporate culture that opens markets with technology of its own.

Leaving the fibre trade behind, and carrying out the change of name

Reflecting the widening of its business territory, the company changed its name in 1970 to Kuraray Co., Ltd.[18] The break with Kurashiki Rayon was more than a change of name: it was a move that declared the conversion from a fibre maker into a high-performance materials maker. The two oil shocks that struck the company in the 1970s dealt a severe blow to the chemical and synthetic fibre industry[19], but Kuraray came through them by expanding into fine chemicals — fragrance and pharmaceutical and agrochemical intermediates derived from isoprene[20] — and by commercialising medical products such as the artificial kidney[21]. Escaping dependence on fibres was the single largest reason it endured that turbulent period, and the proprietary-material development it had kept up since the 1960s was the shield that carried management through the oil shocks.

Entering the 1980s, in 1983 the company established EVAL Company of America, a local production arm for EVAL in the United States[22], and stepped into overseas expansion. The US plant started up in 1986[23], and this first move towards a global supply system became the origin of its worldwide operations. At home it pushed through mergers with affiliated companies — Nippon Velcro (日本ベルクロ) in hook-and-loop fasteners[24] and Kyowa Gas Chemical Industry (協和ガス化学工業) in methacrylic resin[25] — consolidating and strengthening the operating base. The second medium-term management plan drawn up in 1988 set out rationalisation of the fibre business and expansion of the non-fibre businesses, and the scaling back of rayon production, the founding business, began. This structural reform laid the ground for the full withdrawal from the founding business later, and together with the start-up of overseas EVAL production it accelerated the company’s shift of portfolio.

1990–2017The leap into a global functional-materials maker

The three decades to 2017 turned a Japanese fibre company into a supplier rooted in world markets: EVAL production on three continents, the 75-year-old rayon business shut down in 2001, and the poval chain completed by purchase — from Clariant, from HT Troplast, from MonoSol, from DuPont. Consolidated sales reached $4.6B (¥518bn) in the year to December 2017, the highest in the company’s history, and more than 80% of the operating profit came from a single segment.

The three-region EVAL system, and the break with the founding business

In the 1990s Kuraray built out a global supply system for EVAL across three regions — Europe, North America and Japan. In 1991 it established a European headquarters company in Germany, and in 1997 it built a European production site for EVAL, EVAL Europe N.V., in Belgium. That plant started up in 1999, completing a three-region production system spanning Japan, the United States and Europe and making Kuraray, in name and in fact, a supplier rooted in world markets. EVAL held the leading share worldwide, and its uses widened from food packaging to automotive fuel tanks. Establishing this three-region system became the template that would be repeated in the poval and PVB businesses afterwards. Dealing directly with the food industries of Europe and North America raised the quality of earnings, and it also became the base for a cycle of improving product specifications in the light of local regulatory developments. The change mattered: from answering customers in each region by exporting from Japan, to a system in which design, production and improvement are completed on the spot.

Then, in February 2001, Kuraray stopped producing rayon, the business it had been founded on. This complete exit from a 75-year-old founding trade meant that the conversion from a man-made fibre maker into a high-performance materials maker was finished in name as well as in fact. In December of the same year it bought the poval and polyvinyl butyral businesses from Clariant of Switzerland, acquiring at a stroke a European chemicals base that included production sites in Germany. In 2004 it also took over the PVB film business from HT Troplast of Germany, broadening the poval-related value chain in Europe into products such as interlayers for automotive laminated glass. The three-region system now extended beyond EVAL to the poval and PVB businesses, and the operating base of a global functional-materials maker was in place.

Taking world number one in poval through M&A

Entering the 2010s, Kuraray changed course again and put M&A at the centre of its growth. In 2012 it acquired MonoSol Holdings Inc. of the United States at an acquisition cost of about US$395 million, taking the leading position in the market for water-soluble poval film. Completing vertical integration from poval resin through to film, in a field growing on unit-dose packaging such as detergent pods, meant a move out of being a materials maker and into the more highly processed final-product domain. This acquisition was the groundwork for the later title of world number one in water-soluble film, and it shaped the starting point of Kuraray’s M&A strategy. A system in which the company processes its own poval resin at its own film plants worked as a barrier to entry that rivals found hard to imitate.

In June 2014 Kuraray bought DuPont’s vinyl acetate-related businesses for about $612.2M (¥65bn). It acquired a group of businesses with annual sales of more than US$500 million — VAM, PVA and PVB sheet among them — together with production sites in Texas, and made its position as world number one in poval share unassailable. It integrated the technology and sales channels DuPont had built over many years with its own existing operations, and built an integrated chain from feedstock through to final product in North America as well. In the year to December 2017, when the effect of the acquisition came through in full, sales in the vinyl acetate segment reached $2.1B (¥235bn) and segment profit $546.5M (¥61bn); consolidated sales reached $4.6B (¥518bn) and operating profit $669.6M (¥75bn), the highest levels in the company’s history, with the operating margin rising to 14.5%. The DuPont purchase was the finishing touch, after MonoSol, to the North American poval chain, and it carried the earnings base from then on.

For the world, for people, doing what others cannot do

Kuraray’s corporate philosophy — for the world, for people, we do what others cannot do — puts plainly the bent for proprietary technology it has had since its founding. Vinylon, EVAL and poval alike grew not by entering large existing markets but on a strategy of taking global leadership in a niche opened by technology the company had developed itself. The purchase of the DuPont business was an extension of that: it added the downstream domain of film and sheet to a world-leading poval resin, completing a structure in which Kuraray holds the whole value chain. Realising the synergies of the acquisition impressed the company’s M&A capability on observers inside and outside it, and through the sequence of deals running from MonoSol to DuPont it built a position in water-soluble film and laminated-glass interlayers that competitors find hard to follow.

Looking at the segment composition for the year to December 2017, vinyl acetate accounted for $2.1B (¥235bn) of sales, 45% of the total, followed by trading at $1.1B (¥125bn), functional materials at $443.1M (¥50bn), fibres at $352.2M (¥40bn) and isoprene at $267.5M (¥30bn). Segment profit for vinyl acetate was $546.5M (¥61bn), more than 80% of company-wide operating profit, and the degree of earnings dependence on that one business stood out. The high profitability of the core business is one of Kuraray’s strengths, but it also carries the strategic risk of excessive dependence on a single business, and the search for the next growth driver became a management issue. The earnings structure assembled over the previous decade through repeated acquisitions and withdrawals was drifting back towards a one-legged stance on vinyl acetate. Getting out from under that weight became the urgent next move, and a full-scale acquisition in environment-related materials came into view.

2018–2022The light and shadow of acquisition — a US accident, and reform set in motion

The five years from 2018 compressed Kuraray’s best and worst outcomes into a single span: a $1.1B (¥123bn) acquisition that finally gave it a third pillar in activated carbon, an explosion at a plant it had run for years that cost about $691.1M (¥74bn) in litigation losses, and a recovery that still carried sales from $5.5B (¥603bn) to $5.8B (¥756bn). Behind the record numbers, the next structural problem was already forming in isoprene.

The Calgon Carbon acquisition and the move into the environmental field

In March 2018 Kuraray acquired Calgon Carbon Corporation, the largest activated carbon producer in the United States, for about $1.1B (¥123bn). Activated carbon is a material with environment-related uses in water treatment, air purification and the food industry, and with this purchase Kuraray positioned environmental solutions as a new pillar of growth. It integrated the carbon materials business it already held in Japan with Calgon’s activated carbon business, building an integrated system running from feedstock coal through to reactivation. Sales in the functional materials segment doubled from $443.1M (¥50bn) in FY17 to $1.0B (¥112bn) in FY18, the segment took a principal place in the business portfolio, and the company entered environment-related markets in earnest. It was an acquisition that made explicit the intention of adding a second, environment-related pillar to an earnings structure weighted towards vinyl acetate.

With this acquisition Kuraray’s consolidated sales reached $5.5B (¥603bn) and total assets expanded to $8.6B (¥947bn). The strategic intent was to correct an earnings structure skewed towards the vinyl acetate business and to spread the portfolio. Because much of the acquisition money was raised by borrowing, however, interest-bearing debt jumped from $535M (¥60bn) in FY17 to $2.0B (¥217bn) in FY18, and the equity ratio fell from 71.7% to 58.6%. The borrowing changed the financial structure, and from then on management carried the twin task of maintaining financial soundness while pursuing growth investment. Calgon’s US coal-based activated carbon lines and the coconut-shell activated carbon on the Japanese side were complementary in their applications, and the integration synergies were expected to work over the long term, but in the short term they were a clear burden on the accounts. The price of the acquisition was not small, and coinciding with the fire at the US EVAL plant it put the company’s ability to run overseas operations in question.

Fire at the US plant and heavy litigation losses

Only a few months after the Calgon purchase closed, in May 2018, an explosion and fire occurred at the EVAL plant of the US subsidiary Kuraray America, Inc. During a scheduled turnaround an ethylene pressure-raising operation was mishandled, a large volume of ethylene was released and ignited, and 266 people including contract workers were injured — a serious accident. Those injured claimed compensation including for mental distress, and Kuraray booked litigation-related losses of $464.2M (¥51bn) as an extraordinary loss in the year to December 2019 and a further $216.3M (¥23bn) in the year to December 2020. The cumulative loss of about $691.1M (¥74bn) threw into relief the operational risk that came with rapid overseas expansion and the importance of safety management, and it became the occasion for management to rethink from the ground up how governance over acquired subsidiaries should work.

As a result the year to December 2019 fell to a net loss attributable to owners of the parent of $18.3M (¥2bn). In 2020 the worldwide fall in demand from the spread of COVID-19 came on top of that, and operating profit dropped to $414.9M (¥44bn) in FY20. The base of the vinyl acetate business held firm, however, and demand for EVAL and poval traced a recovery as environmental regulation tightened. FY20 sales came in at $5.1B (¥542bn), only 6% below the previous year, and the operating margin held at 8.2%. A business mix in which uses such as automotive, food packaging and water treatment feel the cycle at different times loosened the structure by which one shock brings the whole result down. The trial that arrived immediately after the acquisition put a load on Kuraray’s management system, but the long-standing portfolio diversification that had thinned dependence on a single business worked as the buffer that absorbed the double shock of the accident and the pandemic.

Recovery after COVID, and structural reform set in motion

From 2021 the normalisation of the world economy and the effect of a weaker yen brought Kuraray’s results back. Sales returned to $5.7B (¥629bn) and operating profit to $658.6M (¥72bn) in FY21, and in FY22 reached $5.8B (¥756bn) and $663M (¥87bn) respectively. The operating margin improved to 11.5%. The vinyl acetate segment grew to sales of $2.8B (¥371bn) and segment profit of $589.9M (¥78bn), helped by the weak yen inflating overseas earnings and by recovering demand in food packaging and automotive. The integration effect of the acquisitions and the recovery of demand from the pandemic surfaced at the same time, and Kuraray’s results returned to record levels in a short period. The North American DuPont business and the European poval and PVB businesses contributed for full years, and MonoSol’s water-soluble film captured the expansion of the North American detergent market. The recovery restored an attacking posture to management, and led on to the drawing up of PASSION 2026 in 2022 and the upward revision of the operating-profit target to $837.3M (¥110bn).

In FY22 the segment structure was reorganised, and the sales and marketing functions of the trading segment were folded into the individual business segments. The company moved to a system in which each segment takes charge of opening its own markets, giving a composition that reflects the actual shape of the business portfolio. In the isoprene business, costs related to suspended operations began to be booked as the Chinese market softened and feedstock and fuel prices rose, and the quality of group-wide profit began to be questioned. The capacity build-up in synthetic rubber by Chinese producers and the deterioration of the elastomer market were a structural problem running on from 2018–19, and utilisation at Kuraray’s Kashima plant had begun to fall. Behind results that looked good on the surface the next structural problem was surfacing, and it lodged in the minds of management as the ground that would prompt business reorganisation from the following year, leading on to the sequence of tidying-up that included the reduction of MMA and the exit from non-wovens.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955)↩
  2. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  3. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  4. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955)↩
  5. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  6. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  7. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955)↩
  8. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  9. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  10. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  11. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  12. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  13. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  14. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  15. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  16. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  17. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  18. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  19. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  20. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  21. 日本会社史総覧 (Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1995)↩
  22. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  23. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  24. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩
  25. Kuraray Co., Ltd., annual securities report, 145th term (year to December 2025), corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Kuraray Co., Ltd. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section and the segment disclosures for FY2017 to FY2022.
  2. Diamond (Diamond, Inc.), 26 May 1956, Man-made fibres.
  3. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Kurashiki Rayon entry.
  4. Yomiuri Shimbun, 1 June 1977, on the plan to cut 2,000 jobs at Kuraray.
  5. Eighty Years of Companies and Banks and Compendium of Japanese Corporate Histories.

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