Exiting cement and transferring the sales business to Taiheiyo Cement (2022)

That there was someone next door to hand it to

At the Omi works, limestone dug from Mount Kurohime was sorted by purity and size, and what would not do for carbide went to cement. By-products of carbide and chloroprene rubber went into the kilns, and even waste from outside the company was turned into fuel and raw material. What the resolution of 25 October 2022 cut was not the product cement but this very mechanism of sorting and reuse. In exchange for giving up 2.9% of consolidated sales, the job of digging the stone passed to Taiheiyo Cement.

Putting the chain outside did not, however, make Omi lighter. Limestone will still be bought from Taiheiyo Cement, and the by-products taken by Myojo Cement. That the counterparty could be narrowed to one company owed much to Myojo having a plant in the same city of Itoigawa and to a relationship already built through joint mine development. Turn that around and, without those conditions, the carbide-centred chain could not have been folded up at all. More than the skill of the withdrawal, what told may have been that there was someone next door to hand it to.