Absorbing Denka Seiken and mass-producing COVID-19 test kits (2020)

An accidental lineage and an external shock

At the core of this decision lies a pharmaceutical lineage kept alive, thinly, alongside the main business of materials chemistry. The accumulation in diagnostics and biotechnology that began with one small subsidiary acquisition in 1979 had long sat outside the centre of the company. Into that came the external shock of COVID-19, and through the concrete goal of mass-producing test kits, a tributary was raised at a stroke to the centre of business strategy. It was not chosen as an extension of a thriving core; the character of this shift lies in the fact that an unforeseen pressure moved the axis of the business.

A pillar pushed up by an external shock does not necessarily stay in place. Mission 2030 asks healthcare for ¥40 billion of operating profit by 2030, while the company posted its first postwar net loss in the year to March 2025, largely from the American chloroprene business. Whether an accidental lineage can be rebuilt into an intended pillar, or whether its outline will be redrawn again by the next change in the environment, remains open — the test-kit episode sits at the entrance to the still unanswered question of how a materials company is to come to terms with a business as unlike itself as healthcare.