茄子视频

January 6, 2025
茄子视频

Mr. Hirose’s 2025 New Year’s Message to the JFE Team

Happy New Year, everyone. I am pleased to extend my warmest New Year’s greetings to you all.

I must begin my message by emphasizing the overriding importance of safety. Last year, two serious accidents occurred in our, claiming two precious lives. I express my deepest and most sincere condolences, and pledge to work tirelessly to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again by implementing ever-more thorough measures throughout the entire JFE Group.

Looking back over last year, demand for steel in the Japanese market declined due to labor shortages and rising material costs. Outside Japan, demand for steel also slowed due to the significant impact of the stagnant Chinese economy.

Despite these challenges, and although we did not achieve the earnings targets for the final year of our Seventh Medium-term Business Plan, we expect to achieve profitability for the fourth consecutive year thanks to the effects of our structural reforms and the results you each have achieved in your respective roles. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of you for your hard work and dedication to our various initiatives centered on our Seventh Medium-term Business Plan.

We have focused on transitioning from quantity to quality, mainly through structural reforms, and steadily have improved our capabilities as the benefits of these reforms have been realized. We also embarked on new businesses for long-term growth, including the acquisition of an electrical steel company in India and mining assets in Australia, and the decision to build a new continuous galvanizing line in Fukuyama, Japan. We also made steady progress in reducing CO² emissions to achieve carbon neutrality, and now expect to achieve our 18% reduction target by the end of FY2024.

2025 Priorities and Our Long-term Vision

Looking ahead, the downward trend in domestic steel demand is forecast to continue as Japan’s population declines. Under these challenging conditions, we aim to improve our earning power by pursuing further cost reductions and strengthening our competitiveness.

This year marks the start of our Eighth Medium-term Business Plan. In formulating this plan, we are developing “the Long-term Vision toward 2035” to address the issues facing us, including carbon neutrality and declining domestic steel demand, so that our company and our employees take on new challenges and grow together. With our new medium-term plan, we aim to maximize growth and earnings by strengthening our domestic earning power and executing growth strategies in overseas markets and promising fields.

This year, we will implement product strategies that better meet the needs of society, further expand investment in growth strategies mainly overseas, carry out investment and R&D targeting carbon neutrality, and pursue new businesses. We will continue to grow with our technology prowess and competitiveness and become an even more sustainable, cutting-edge company leading the world toward carbon neutrality.

There are four key priorities we will focus on this year.

1. Maximizing earnings by strengthening production and sales structure

In order to capture demand for steel products and create a highly competitive production and sales structure, we will reinforce planned maintenance and management of production facilities to ensure stable operations, and also pursue higher operational efficiency. We will work to expand sales of high-value-added products in strategic areas even in the face of declining demand. In addition, we will strive to ensure that our sales prices fairly reflect our costs and added value.

2. Leading the world toward carbon neutrality

In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, we will step up the development of innovative technologies for carbon-recycling blast furnaces, hydrogen direct-reduction steelmaking , and large-scale electric arc furnaces (EAFs), and we plan to begin trials sequentially. Let us all join hands in our endeavors to develop technologies which will carry us to the future. In Kurashiki we plan to convert our process to large-scale electric arc furnace (EAF) and in Chiba we are building an EAF for stainless steel. Let us focus on implementing these investments for green transformation (GX). We will continue to develop and expand our customer base by actively communicating the high environmental value of our JGreeX^® green steel to our customers.

3. Pursuing growth

To support our sustainable growth, we will continue to expand overseas businesses in growth areas as well as collaborate with raw material suppliers. We will also expand our solutions business by leveraging leading technologies and expertise, and take on the challenge of developing new businesses.

4. Leveraging digital transformation

Digital technologies (DX) can realize more efficient operations and more effective work environments. This year we will continue to deploy DX not only for production but also for a wide range of functions and processes throughout our company to improve productivity. To enhance DX literacy among all employees, we will revamp our in-house DX training program to incorporate the latest developments including generative AI. I encourage everyone to actively adopt new DX technologies so that you work better and more efficiently, for yourself and for the group as a whole.

2025 Action Plan

This year we will take strides toward realizing our purpose and our long-term vision. Our company is defined by our people. You are the true driving force behind everything we do. This year, we will continue to implement the ReFuture Project to ensure that every employee finds fulfillment in his or her job and continues to grow toward a brighter future. As you move forward, I would like to emphasize three points.

Think for yourself and always pursue growth

Harnessing each person’s full potential is critical to meeting the challenges we face in this rapidly changing world. To that end, please remind yourself to personally think about what you are doing and how it might be done better, and take the initiative to suggest changes and improvements. Take ownership of the issues we face, develop critical thinking skills and seek out learning opportunities to expand your talents and abilities. Take on challenges, even small ones. We want to be a company where everyone takes on challenges, supports each other’s endeavors to grow together, and experiences job satisfaction in doing so.

Put our values into action every day

I am confident that by translating the values we developed together last year into practice we can move closer to what we intend to realize in our company and create better workplaces based on our shared values. Even if you focus on only one of the six values, please try to act on it. Take confidence in what you are already doing, and then gradually try to align your actions with our values in the other areas too. If you are a manager, use these values when advising your teammates, and be sure to praise and encourage those who put our values into practice.

Embrace diversity and respect each other’s views

As we respond to complex global changes and expand our business into new fields and markets worldwide, we must also create new value through diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), so that everyone can enjoy opportunities, recognition and success. Be aware of your own personal qualities and use your uniqueness to advance your work and achieve results. Let’s create workplaces that are not defined by old ways of doing things, but instead encourage all teammates to express different opinions take on new challenges and celebrate achievements. By doing so, we will be able to come up with new ideas and innovations.

Safety

To make our company one which our families are proud of, at home and in society, we must ensure safe and healthy work environments and workplaces for all employees. Safety depends on honest, open dialogue as well as personal initiative in thinking and action. Safety depends on our own initiatives and responsible actions. Having an open and transparent conversation, striving to understand the situation on the shop floor, identifying risks and making improvements are key factors. Front-line employees must take safety personally, understand the intent of our rules, and comply with them. Please also take good care of your own physical and mental health and wellbeing.

Compliance and Cooperation

Our business depends on public trust. A single breach of compliance could irreparably damage that trust and threaten the very survival of our company.

In closing

Finally, to respond to our long-term challenges and ever-changing environment, communicating closely with our labor union and working together cohesively toward our common future is indispensable. In our journey of transformation, as a company and as employees, let us grow and stride toward our shared future. We depend on your continued cooperation.

In closing, it gives me great pleasure to wish all of you and your families a fruitful, healthy and happy New Year, and I sincerely hope that you have a wonderful 2025.

Note: This message is based on information current as of December 10, 2024.