Sumitomo Chemical - Company History

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Financial history 1952–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1913
Origin 住友財閥
Founding location 愛媛県新居浜市
Core business at founding Sulphuric acid and superphosphate of lime made from copper-smelter waste gas
Listed 1949
President Mito Nobuaki President since 2025 (age 66, as of 2026)
Current priority Business restructuring · Focus and concentration Shrinking petrochemicals and concentrating on pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronics
Founding
In September 1913 the Sumitomo head office set up a fertiliser works at Niihama in Ehime prefecture. The sulphur dioxide given off by the smelter of the Besshi copper mine was damaging the farmland around it; capture the gas, turn it into sulphuric acid and make superphosphate of lime from it, and the pollution and a new business would be settled in one move. Five years passed between 1908, when Kajiura Kamajiro (梶浦鎌次郎) submitted his proposal, and the start of work. The first shipment went out in October 1915, and in June 1925 the operation was spun out as Sumitomo Fertiliser Works Co., Ltd. with capital of ¥3 million. In October 1928 it signed a technology contract for ammonia synthesis with the Nitrogen Engineering Corporation of the United States, and in February 1934 it changed its trading name to Sumitomo Chemical Industries. Unlike its contemporaries, which began from imported patents or imported raw materials, its starting feedstock was a by-product of its own copper mine.
The Decision
It went on taking on overseas plant by a logic that lay outside profitability. The two oil crises made power-hungry aluminium smelting unviable, and Sumitomo Chemical separated that business in July 1976 and withdrew from it in October 1981. Yet in February 1982 Asahan Aluminium, of 225,000 tonnes a year, began operating as a Japan–Indonesia economic co-operation project. In January 1983 it shut the ethylene plant at Ehime and concentrated production at Chiba, and in March of the following year, 1984, a complex of 300,000 tonnes a year came on stream as a Japan–Singapore economic co-operation project. The asymmetry of cutting at home while building abroad ran on until the move into Rabigh in May 2004 through a fifty-fifty joint venture with Saudi Aramco. That integrated refining and petrochemical site, which started up in April 2009, became the main cause of the losses twenty years later.
Today
The business that produced the largest loss is now the largest source of profit. In the year to March 2024 Sumitomo Chemical reported an operating loss of $3.2B (¥489bn) and a net loss of $2.1B (¥312bn), the worst results since its founding, with Sumitomo Pharma alone accounting for an operating loss of $834.3M (¥126bn). In the year to March 2026 revenue came back to $14.7B (¥2.33tn) and operating profit to $959.2M (¥152bn), and Sumitomo Pharma earned $685.4M (¥108bn) on sales of $2.9B (¥452bn). Essential & Green Materials, which contains petrochemicals, also turned a profit of $91M (¥14bn) on sales of $4.3B (¥679bn), leaving the red for the first time in three years. What reversed the result in a single year, however, was not a new source of earnings. It was the root-and-branch structural reform and the shrinking of assets pursued since 2024 that made the profit.
Competition
Of the two companies that placed chemicals and pharmaceuticals side by side, it is Sumitomo Chemical that kept the pharmaceuticals. Mitsubishi Chemical Group took Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma private in 2020 through a tender offer of $4.6B (¥492bn), and sold it to Bain Capital of the United States for about $3.4B (¥510bn) in 2025. Mitsui Chemicals declared in 1985, under the banner of “super-petrochemicals”, that it would break out of commodity petrochemicals, but it held no pharmaceuticals. Sumitomo Chemical kept its stake after transferring the pharmaceuticals business to the joint venture Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals in October 1984, and by way of Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma in 2005 it still consolidates Sumitomo Pharma today. Its judgement to step down from petrochemicals came later than its peers, held over until the root-and-branch structural reform of November 2023. That the petrochemicals it was late to cut and the pharmaceuticals it chose to keep sank together in the same year to March 2024 produced the worst loss since its founding.

Timeline

1913–1957From smoke abatement at the Besshi mine to a diversified chemical company

  1. 1913Sumitomo head office opens a fertiliser works at Niihama
  2. 1915Shipments of superphosphate of lime begin; trading starts
  3. 1925Spun out as Sumitomo Fertiliser Works, capital ¥3m
  4. 1928Ammonia synthesis licensed from the Nitrogen Engineering Corporation
  5. 1931Ammonia production begins at Niihama
  6. 1934Renamed Sumitomo Chemical Industries
  7. 1944Merges with Nihon Senryo Seizo, entering dyestuffs and medicines
  8. 1946Renamed Nisshin Chemical Industries under zaibatsu dissolution
  9. 1949Lists on the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges
  10. 1949Takes over the plant of the former Sumitomo Aluminium Smelting
  11. 1953Parathion technology licensed from American Cyanamid
  12. 1952Returns to the name Sumitomo Chemical Industries

1958–2007Petrochemicals and the age of national projects

  1. 1958Ethylene and low-density polyethylene start at the Ehime Works
  2. 1962Polypropylene technology licensed from Montecatini of Italy
  3. 1965Sumitomo Chiba Chemical established; Central Research Laboratory opens at Takatsuki
  4. 1969Large-scale production of the agrochemical Sumithion at the Oita Works
  5. 1971Takarazuka Research Laboratories established
  6. 1976Aluminium business separated as Sumitomo Aluminium Smelting
  7. 1978The Misawa Works starts up
  8. 1982Asahan Aluminium begins operating in Indonesia
  9. 1983Ehime ethylene plant halted; production concentrated at Chiba
  10. 1984Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals founded with Inabata & Co.
  11. 1984The Singapore petrochemical complex comes on stream
  12. 1988Valent U.S.A. established with Chevron Chemical
  13. 1994Reorganised into four sectors: basic, petrochemical, fine and agricultural chemicals
  14. 1998The acrylic acid and MMA project starts operating
  15. 2003The planned business integration with Mitsui Chemicals is abandoned
  16. 2004Memorandum signed with Saudi Aramco on the Rabigh complex
  17. 2004Renamed Sumitomo Chemical; head office moved to Tokyo
  18. 2005Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals and Dainippon Pharmaceutical merge

2008–2023Rabigh, Latuda and electronics: three domains and a hidden risk

  1. 2009Hirose Hiroshi becomes president
  2. 2009First consolidated net loss in company history
  3. 2009Petro Rabigh's core ethane cracker starts up with Saudi Aramco
  4. 2009Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma acquires Sepracor, gaining Latuda
  5. 2011Tokura Masakazu becomes president; fine chemicals sector reorganised
  6. 2013Consolidated net loss on European weakness and Rabigh
  7. 2015Basic chemicals and petrochemicals sectors reorganised
  8. 2017Moves to IFRS reporting
  9. 2018Operating profit reaches a record ¥250.9bn
  10. 2019Iwata Keiichi becomes president
  11. 2019Sumitomo Pharma allies with Roivant Sciences
  12. 2020Four South American agrochemical subsidiaries bought from Nufarm
  13. 2023First operating loss since the adoption of IFRS
  14. 2023Short-term earnings measures and a sanctuary-free structural reform announced

Founding Story

1913–1957From smoke abatement at the Besshi mine to a diversified chemical company

Sumitomo Chemical spent its first four decades converting an obligation into an industry. The waste gas of a copper mine became sulphuric acid, sulphuric acid became fertiliser, fertiliser became ammonia, and ammonia opened the way into dyestuffs, medicines and light metals — so that by the time the company won back its Sumitomo name in 1952, on sales of $41.1M (¥15bn), it stood on five legs rather than one; by 1957 sales had roughly doubled to $80M (¥29bn), and the next swap of feedstock, from coal to oil, was already being prepared.

A fertiliser business born out of pollution control at the Besshi copper mine

Sumitomo Chemical's starting point was not chemistry but the disposal of pollution from the Besshi copper mine. Sumitomo's business had begun with the development of the Besshi copper mine in Ehime prefecture[1], and the sulphur dioxide released by its smelter damaged the farmland around it, forcing the Sumitomo head office to respond[2]. If the gas were captured and turned into sulphuric acid, that acid could serve as the feedstock for fertiliser. In September 1913 the Sumitomo head office set up a fertiliser works at Niihama[3], and from the following year, 1914, began trial runs of the plant. Shipments of superphosphate of lime started in October 1915[4], and in June 1925 the operation was spun out as Sumitomo Fertiliser Works Co., Ltd.[5] with capital of ¥3 million[6]. Launching a new business and a solution to pollution as one and the same thing set the company apart in origin from the synthetic chemistry of its contemporaries. In an industry whose firms typically began from imported patents or imported raw materials, Sumitomo Chemical alone placed a by-product of its own copper mine at the starting point.

For Sumitomo Chemical, fertiliser was a business that existed because the feedstock — sulphuric acid — came first. The later diversification into a full-line chemical company inherited the same mainstream Sumitomo thinking: take the resource of the Besshi copper mine and raise the value of its by-products. From sulphuric acid to fertiliser, from fertiliser to ammonia, from ammonia to chemical products in general, the business was stacked up by extending the feedstock chain one step downstream at a time. Even the post-war move into petrochemicals belongs to the same current if it is read as swapping the raw material from coal to oil. The overseas petrochemical ventures of 110 years later — Rabigh, Asahan, Singapore — were likewise downstream development on top of a feedstock location sought abroad, and the thinking of the starting point survived in a changed form.

From ammonia synthesis to a full-line chemical company

A business built on fertiliser alone eventually reached its ceiling. Sulphuric acid and superphosphate offered only limited room for the market to grow, and the company looked to ammonia — where Japan's self-sufficiency was low — as its next pillar. In 1928 it licensed an ammonia synthesis process from the Nitrogen Engineering Corporation of the United States[7], and production began at Niihama in April 1931[8]. That gave it a base from which to spread, with ammonia at the centre, into ammonium sulphate, nitric acid and chemical products generally, and in February 1934 it changed its trading name to Sumitomo Chemical Industries[9]. Capital, ¥3 million when the company was spun out, had risen to ¥20 million by the time of that change of name[10]. The word for fertiliser disappeared from the company name, and the shape of a chemical manufacturer was in place. It was the turning point at which a single-feedstock fertiliser company rewrote both its sign and its substance into a full-line chemical company holding ammonia derivatives. From here Sumitomo Chemical acquired the pattern of diversifying by extending its feedstock chain downstream.

In July 1944 it merged with Nihon Senryo Seizo (日本染料製造), stepping into dyestuffs and pharmaceuticals[11]. In June of the same year the Sumitomo head office took over the management of Sumitomo Aluminium Smelting under contract, bringing integrated production from alumina through to aluminium into the group as well[12]. The following year, 1945, it also absorbed Ozaki Senryo Kagaku Kogyosho (尾崎染料化学工業所), widening the base of the dyestuffs business further[13]. This was a period in which the wartime controlled economy drove reorganisation across the zaibatsu-affiliated companies, and Sumitomo Chemical emerged with the outline of a full-line chemical company holding fertiliser, organic chemicals and light metals. A company that had started on fertiliser alone had, in little more than a decade, widened its span to five legs — sulphuric acid, ammonia, dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals and light metals. Because the expansion took place under wartime conditions, the completeness and profitability of the plant varied widely, but a depth of chemical engineers and production sites accumulated that would serve the later entry into petrochemicals. The company's self-definition as a full-line chemical maker also settled in this period.

Defeat, the dissolution of the zaibatsu, and winning back the Sumitomo name

After the defeat the company was exposed to the wave of zaibatsu dissolution. In February 1946 it thinned its Sumitomo colouring by renaming itself Nisshin Chemical Industries[14], seeking to escape designation among the holding companies to be broken up. In May 1949 it listed on the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges[15], and in December took over all the plant of the former Sumitomo Aluminium Smelting, building a structure that completed everything from alumina to aluminium in-house[16]. In August 1952, following the entry into force of the San Francisco Peace Treaty[17], it returned to the name Sumitomo Chemical Industries. The six years from the change of name to the return were a period in which it had to erase its zaibatsu colouring and hold its businesses together at the same time, and the mainstream Sumitomo pattern of organising businesses along a feedstock chain was kept almost intact. That it did not shrink the businesses themselves during the post-war confusion left it the capacity to industrialise polyethylene in 1958.

Through the post-war recovery Sumitomo Chemical was rebuilt as a diversified company standing on four legs: fertiliser, dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals and aluminium. At the Niihama works (today the Ehime Works) the ammonia and ammonium sulphate plant was restored in October 1945 and production resumed; aluminium came back in 1948 and caustic soda in 1951, from which it extended into polyvinyl chloride resin[18], and in 1955 it completed an expansion with a large urea plant[19]. The Osaka works resumed production of dyestuffs and pharmaceuticals, launching the anti-tuberculosis drug PAS and an antihistamine cold remedy in 1950[20], while the Nishijima plant handled Pynamin, a pyrethroid household insecticide[21]. In agrochemicals it licensed parathion technology in 1953 and malathion in 1954 from American Cyanamid[22], laying the foundation of the agrochemical and insecticide pillar to come. The production and technical base that the later move into petrochemicals presupposed was assembled in this way.

1958–2007Petrochemicals and the age of national projects

Over half a century Sumitomo Chemical became a petrochemical company, and then something more awkward than that: sales grew from $86.4M (¥31bn) in the year ethylene first flowed at Ehime to $15.2B (¥1.79tn) fifty years later, as licensed resins, agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and electronic materials were added in turn. The same decades also taught it to accept overseas plants it had not chosen on commercial grounds — Asahan, Singapore and, at the close of the period, Rabigh — and the obligations signed in the name of economic diplomacy would outlive the men who signed them.

Japan's first polyethylene, on the ICI high-pressure process

In May 1958 production of ethylene and low-density polyethylene began at the Ehime Works[23]. It was the first plant in Japan to use the high-pressure process of ICI of Britain, and Sumitomo Chemical entered petrochemicals ahead of its rivals[24]. In November 1962 it brought in polypropylene technology from Montecatini of Italy[25], and in November 1965 established Sumitomo Chiba Chemical at Ichihara in Chiba prefecture (merged in 1975; today the Chiba Works)[26]. It now had ethylene plant at two sites, Ehime and Chiba, and a full set of the basic commodity resins, polyethylene and polypropylene. In the period when Japan's petrochemical industry was being started up after the war, assembling everything from feedstock procurement through to finished products in a single line by way of overseas licences was among the earliest such moves in the country.

In January 1970 an ethylene plant of 300,000 tonnes a year and a complex of derivative units were completed at Chiba, and Sumitomo Chemical became a petrochemical manufacturer in earnest. Around the same time the low-toxicity organophosphate agrochemical Sumithion (produced from 1969 at the Oita Works)[27] and the pyrethroid household insecticides Pynamin and Neo-Pynamin spread into world markets. Here the prototype was formed of the business structure characteristic of Sumitomo Chemical, in which ethylene production and agrochemicals and insecticides stand side by side — heavy chemistry and light chemistry coexisting. A structure that balances feedstock through commodity resins and earns its profit in speciality chemicals went on to become a model for the full-line chemical company. The agrochemicals and insecticides were the result of applying to products the accumulation of organic chemistry gained from ammonia synthesis in the 1930s, and were another fruit of feedstock-chain diversification. Growing the two axes of petrochemicals and speciality chemicals at the same time also put the company ahead of its domestic peers.

Asahan and Singapore: going abroad on the nation's account

The two oil crises made power-hungry aluminium smelting unviable, and in July 1976 Sumitomo Chemical separated the aluminium business as Sumitomo Aluminium Smelting[28]. In October 1981 it withdrew from the business[29], and in December 1986 that company was dissolved[30]. In the same period, in February 1982, Asahan Aluminium — 225,000 tonnes a year, run as a Japan–Indonesia economic co-operation project — began operating[31]. The company thus handed down two contradictory judgements at once: withdraw at home, keep going abroad as a national project. The rise in power costs after the oil crises made domestic smelting effectively impossible, yet it could not walk away from an overseas venture that carried an intergovernmental agreement on its back. Here surfaced the pattern of a company that had taken on post-war heavy and chemical industrialisation being caught between economic rationality and the demands of the state. The contradiction was carried over, in changed form, all the way to the Rabigh project.

The same pattern appeared in petrochemicals. In parallel with shutting the ethylene plant at Ehime in January 1983 and concentrating production at Chiba[32], in March 1984 the Singapore petrochemical complex — 300,000 tonnes a year, run as a Japan–Singapore economic co-operation project — was brought on stream[33]. Sumitomo Chemical went on accepting overseas petrochemicals as the receptacle for the country's economic diplomacy, and that posture led later to Rabigh in Saudi Arabia. The asymmetric decision-making — cutting capacity at home while building new capacity abroad — was closer to the discharge of an obligation on a government project than to a judgement about returns. Through the 1970s and 1980s Sumitomo Chemical carried a double role, a private company that was also the receptacle of national strategy. The origin of the structural losses that would surface forty years later was already built into the system in this period. Overseas petrochemicals became a kind of institutional constraint for Japan's chemical manufacturers.

Spinning out pharmaceuticals, extending into agrochemicals and electronic chemicals

In February 1984 the company set up Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals as a joint venture with Inabata & Co., and in October of the same year transferred the pharmaceuticals business to it[34]. It was a judgement that cut medicines away from the parent and gave them a form in which a dedicated company could compete with the world's drug makers. Pharmaceuticals, whose research and development spending is of an entirely different order, could not reasonably be carried as one division inside a full-line chemical company, and the separation was Sumitomo Chemical's own choice. In January 2000 it bought the biological-pesticide business of Abbott Laboratories of the United States and established Valent BioSciences, and in May 2001 acquired the household insecticide business of Aventis of France, consolidating its world share in pyrethroids. With the two lines of Sumithion and pyrethroids, agrochemicals and insecticides settled in as one of Sumitomo Chemical's earners. Filling in the missing pieces through overseas acquisitions became characteristic of the company from around this time.

In October 2001 an Information and Electronic Chemicals sector was created, and in March 2003 mass production of colour filters for liquid-crystal displays began at Dongwoo STI of South Korea (today Dongwoo Fine-Chem). In October 2004 the company changed its trading name to Sumitomo Chemical and moved its head office to Tokyo, and in October 2005 it merged Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals with Dainippon Pharmaceutical to create Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma. Over these twenty years a shape took form in which three dedicated axes — pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronics — were grown inside a full-line chemical company. While domestic rivals consolidated their petrochemicals or spun their pharmaceuticals out altogether, Sumitomo Chemical was distinctive in choosing to hold all three axes within its own camp. The portfolio strategy of offsetting the cyclicality of commodity petrochemicals with three high-value-added axes remained the company's basic policy through to the Tokura years that followed. The ground was also laid here for the later consolidated results that would collapse across the whole company at once.

2008–2023Rabigh, Latuda and electronics: three domains and a hidden risk

The years after the Lehman shock gave Sumitomo Chemical both its best figures and its worst. Two bets placed in the single month of April 2009 — the Rabigh complex in Saudi Arabia and the North American base for the schizophrenia drug Latuda — carried the company to a record operating profit of $2.3B (¥251bn) and revenue of $21.0B (¥2.77tn), and then came due together, leaving it with its first operating loss since the adoption of IFRS.

The Lehman shock and the first consolidated net loss

In April 2009 Hirose Hiroshi (廣瀨博) became president. The year to March 2009, struck directly by the Lehman shock of the previous autumn, had produced sales of $19.1B (¥1.79tn), an operating profit of only $22.5M (¥2bn) and a consolidated net loss of $631.9M (¥59bn) — the first consolidated bottom-line loss in Sumitomo Chemical's history — and Hirose took office charged with putting it right. It was an occasion on which the cyclicality carried by a full-line chemical company came to the surface, with a violent swing in raw material prices and a sudden fall in demand taking effect at the same time. However much it had grown three high-value-added axes, the structure in which the consolidated accounts show a loss once the petrochemical core sinks into deficit had not changed. Because the chemical industry is swayed both by crude and naphtha prices and by downstream demand, an external shock shrinks margin and volume together. The Lehman shock was the classic case, and Sumitomo Chemical ran for the first time into the limits of its portfolio strategy.

In the same month, April 2009, the core ethane cracker of Petro Rabigh, built jointly with Saudi Aramco, began operating. It was the company's overseas petrochemical base after Singapore, and for Sumitomo Chemical the culmination of the national-project style of expansion abroad. In October 2009 Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma acquired Sepracor of the United States, gaining the North American sales base for Latuda, the schizophrenia drug that would later become Sumitomo Pharma's mainstay. With the wounds of the Lehman shock still open, two bets began running at the same time. Both involved investment on the scale of hundreds of billions of yen, and both would take more than ten years to show whether they had worked. The two came back in the same year as the main causes of the loss in the year to March 2024. That the fates of the pharmaceutical and the petrochemical axes among the three high-value-added businesses were laid down simultaneously in the immediate aftermath of the Lehman shock is not to be overlooked in reading Sumitomo Chemical's history.

Pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronic chemicals: three high-value-added axes

In April 2011 Tokura Masakazu (十倉雅和) became president and took charge of the rebuilding after the crisis. The year to March 2013 brought another net loss, of $522.5M (¥51bn), as European weakness and poor results at Rabigh came together, but in the second half of the 2010s the three axes — pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronics — became earners at the same time. Sumitomo Pharma grew Latuda's sales in the United States, Dongwoo Fine-Chem captured polarising-film demand from Chinese and Korean display makers, and the agrochemical business grew its sales with South America at the centre. The structure in which three axes offset the cyclicality of basic chemicals finally became visible in the numbers. It was the period in which the cultivation of the three axes of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and electronic chemicals, pursued since the 1990s, was at last repaid in earnings after a change of generation. Yet it was recognised inside the company too that each axis, while it went on growing, carried an individual risk of its own.

In April 2015 the basic chemicals and petrochemicals businesses were reorganised into a Petrochemicals sector and an Energy & Functional Materials sector. In April 2019 Iwata Keiichi (岩田圭一) became president. In December 2019 Sumitomo Pharma entered a strategic alliance with Roivant Sciences of Europe, aiming to secure a pipeline to succeed Latuda. In April 2020 it acquired four South American agrochemical subsidiaries of Nufarm of Australia, securing a foothold that later carried its own products, such as Indiflin, into South America. It was a period of building the next pillars in both pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals, but each carried short-term amortisation charges and long-term uncertainty at the same time. The Roivant alliance came with goodwill on the scale of hundreds of billions of yen, and the Nufarm acquisition was exposed to exchange rates and to local profitability. These were moves to keep the three high-value-added axes going into the next generation, and at the same time moves that raised the potential for the impairments to come.

A ¥200bn core operating profit, and the risk beneath it

After moving to IFRS in the year to March 2017, operating profit corresponding to core operating profit reached $2.3B (¥251bn) in the year to March 2018, a record level. In the later Tokura years Sumitomo Chemical looked like a company earning its money from three high-value-added domains — pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and IT-related chemicals. The year to March 2022 too, on pandemic demand for medicines and agrochemicals and on a weak yen, produced revenue of $21.0B (¥2.77tn) and profit attributable to owners of the parent of $1.2B (¥162bn). With a following wind from external conditions, the period was taken inside and outside the company as one in which the portfolio strategy had succeeded. The cyclicality of basic chemicals became invisible for as long as the three axes earned, and on a consolidated view the company looked to have a stable, highly profitable constitution. It was a period in which the superiority of the three-axis model was repeatedly emphasised in explanations to investors as well.

Behind this, however, the depressed refining margins at Rabigh and the expiry of Latuda's patent in 2023 were accumulating as future sources of loss. In the year to March 2022 Essential Chemicals fell away sharply on worsening terms of trade, down $667.6M (¥88bn) on the previous year, and in the year to March 2023 the operating result was a loss of $220.6M (¥31bn) — the first operating loss since the adoption of IFRS. The largest problem the Iwata regime carried was the simultaneous stalling of all three earning pillars. That even the high-value-added axes that were supposed to offset cyclicality collapsed in the same year overturned the very premise of the portfolio strategy. A structure assembled on the assumption that if one of the three axes sank the other two would hold it up does not work at all when all three sink together. It was thrown into relief that the three axes of petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and electronics in fact shared a common cyclical component, and that the independence of their risks had never been guaranteed.

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Notes

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji 企業の歴史 : 明治百年, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  2. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. A History of Sumitomo Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. 住友化学工業株式会社史, Sumitomo Chemical Industries, 1981↩
  5. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  6. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji 企業の歴史 : 明治百年, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  7. A History of Sumitomo Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. 住友化学工業株式会社史, Sumitomo Chemical Industries, 1981↩
  8. A History of Sumitomo Chemical Industries Co., Ltd. 住友化学工業株式会社史, Sumitomo Chemical Industries, 1981↩
  9. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  10. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji 企業の歴史 : 明治百年, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  11. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  12. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji 企業の歴史 : 明治百年, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  13. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji 企業の歴史 : 明治百年, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  14. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  15. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  16. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  17. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  18. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  19. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  20. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  21. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  22. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  23. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  24. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  25. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  26. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  27. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  28. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  29. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1995 edition, the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry↩
  30. My Showa Years at Sumitomo 私の住友昭和史, Toyo Keizai Inc., 1988↩
  31. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  32. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  33. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  34. Sumitomo Chemical, annual securities report, corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, the source of the consolidated revenue and profit figures shown here.
  2. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968).
  3. A Conspectus of Japanese Corporate Histories, Toyo Keizai Inc. (1995), the Sumitomo Chemical Industries entry.

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