April 1, 2004

Toagosei to Make Singapore Acrylic Ester Wholly Owned Subsidiary

Toagosei has reached a basic agreement with Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd. (head office: Chuo ward, Osaka, president: Hiromasa Yonekura) to make Singapore Acrylic Ester Pte. Ltd. (abbreviated as SAE, production capacity: 82,000 tons of acrylic ester per year), which it had jointly founded and operated with Sumitomo Chemical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toagosei. Toagosei will receive transfer of shares in SAE held by Sumitomo Chemical as of June 30 of this year.

Although Toagosei has been consistently deploying its acrylic operations upstream, midstream and downstream as one of its core businesses, its acrylic ester operations are at the core of its upstream monomer operations, and this positioning of SAE as a wholly owned subsidiary is considered to allow it to further expand and develop those operations.
At present, the demand for acrylic esters tends to be driven by China, and their demand is growing considerably throughout Asia. Following the elimination of production bottlenecks in 2003, SAE has already been able to increase its production capacity from 60,000 tons/year to 82,000 tons/year.
With this rapidly growing market in the background, Toagosei intends to continue to promote its acrylic operations in Singapore with the aim of perpetual growth in the future as well.

In addition, Sumitomo Chemical will also transfer 51% of its holdings in Singapore Acrylic Pte. Ltd. (abbreviated as SAA, production capacity: 60,000 tons of acrylic acid per year, 60% owned by Sumitomo Chemical, 40% owned by Toagosei), a producer of acrylic acid similarly jointly founded and operated by Toagosei, to Nippon Shokubai Co., Ltd. (head office: Chuo ward, Osaka, president: Hiroshi Yanagida) after the three firms reached a basic agreement to alter their equity participation to 51% ownership by Nippon Shokubai, 40% ownership by Toagosei and 9% ownership by Sumitomo Chemical.