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| November 29, 1999 |
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Transfer of Nippon Roche Fukuroi Factory
To
Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation. |
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Nippon Roche K.K.
Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation |
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Nippon Roche K.K. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President: Hiroaki Shigeta)
and Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, President:
Kanji Shono) have reached an agreement to transfer assets of Nippon Roche's Fukuroi
Factory to Mitsubishi Chemical. The transfer procedure is scheduled to be complete
by the end of December this year, and as from January next year, the factory will
be operated as a fully owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Chemical. The agreement
has still to be approved by the relevant regulatory authorities.
Since 1971 when Fukuroi factory started its operations, the factory has been producing
vitamin B2 together with various pharmaceutical intermediates. However, based
on Roche group's (headquartered in Basel, Switzerland) decision to consolidate
the production of vitamin B2 to the factory in Germany from middle of 2000, (please
see attached press release) Nippon Roche has been considering a possibility of
transferring its Fukuroi factory to some other company.
On the other hand, Mitsubishi Chemical, making the best use of its organic synthesis
and fermentation synthesis technology, accumulated as an all-round chemical manufacturer,
has placed the production of pharmaceutical intermediates as a core business and
is attempting to strengthen this business. This is due to the fact such business
is increasing rapidly according to the spread of production outsourcing of pharmaceutical
companies. Presently, the company is supplying several pharmaceutical intermediates
mainly to the large pharmaceutical companies in Europe and USA, but in order to
cope with the increasing demand for product lineups, the company urgently needs
to secure production facilities.
As the two companies' intentions have met, we came to this agreement. Moreover,
together with the transfer of Fukuroi factory, (1) Nippon Roche will transfer
its D-ribose manufacturing technology now in use at its Fukuroi factory to Mitsubishi
Chemical. Then Mitsubishi Chemical will supply D-ribose to Roche thereafter.(2)Besides
D-ribose, Roche will entrust Mitsubishi Chemical with the production of four other
pharmaceutical intermediates. For the time being, employees as temporary transfer
from Nippon Roche will operate the factory, and later on their registration will
be transferred to the new company.
Mitsubishi Chemical will operate Fukuroi factory as a main foothold of the increasingly
competitive business of pharmaceutical intermediates by combining the fermentation
scaling-up technology accumulated up to now at Fukuroi factory, and the fermentation
& synthesis technology cultivated by long years of practice at Mitsubishi
Chemical.
| For further information, please contact |
| Nippon Roche K.K. |
| Public Relations Group |
| Tel: [+81] 3-5443-6700 |
| Mitsubishi Chemical Corp. |
| Public Relations Office |
| Tel: [+81] 3-3283-6274 |
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