Taking in municipal and industrial waste — and commercialising eco-cement (2000)

The kiln stayed the same; the accounting changed

The 1,450°C kiln had stood in the same place since before the merger. What changed was not the equipment but what the material fed into it was called. A company that had seen coal ash and blast-furnace slag as by-products useful for cutting costs moved to the other side of the transaction — collecting a processing fee from those who brought waste in — and answered Chiba Prefecture’s request with ¥10bn of investment. When president Kimura Michio said that, to put it at its most extreme, cement was the by-product, he was, it seems, deliberately discarding the company’s own definition of itself as a maker that sells a product.

This did not, however, repair the domestic business. Eco-cement costs 50% more to produce than ordinary cement and stands up only because it extends the life of the final disposal sites of the Tama district — a public benefit. The processing-fee income that cut manufacturing costs at the Saitama and Kumagaya plants by roughly ¥1,000 a tonne is likewise a business that depends on a counterparty. What this venture supported was the profitability of a shrinking domestic cement business; it did not win back demand itself. Changing how the company earns and changing where it earns would each be needed separately, later.