Moving to a holding company split into five operating firms, and switching feedstock from ore to recycled material (2006)

Out of the inconvenience of being inland

The inconvenience of Kosaka being inland is what, in the end, determined this company’s feedstock. As rival smelters moved to the coast, Kosaka — burdened with freight costs — had no choice but to handle complex sulphide ore rich in gold and silver, and the technique for separating several metals out of that awkward material stayed with it. That waste circuit boards and effluent sludge, materials of no fixed composition, could be put into its furnaces appears to owe everything to the technology born of that inconvenience. The explanation heard on site — that holding domestic mines until 1994 kept the skills from dispersing — overlaps with the same point.

The move to a holding company did not, however, generate profit by itself. Even after the businesses were sorted into five boxes, the urban-mine furnace ran at only around 60% against a plan of 71.8% in fiscal 2009, and small consumer electronics would not come in, blocked by waste-disposal law. Fixing the direction — from ore to waste as feedstock — and making that direction pay were two different things. It was a reorganization in which the shape of the organization was decided first, and several years passed before the substance caught up.