Fiscal 2021 Message to New Employees from President Miyuki Ishihara

Hello, everyone. This year we are live streaming our initiation ceremony for new employees who have joined the company effective from April. On behalf of the entire UACJ Group, I would like to congratulate all of you for joining our organization, and I am delighted to welcome each of you today.

I would like to begin by looking back at 2020. Obviously, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, we saw dramatic changes in people’s values and behaviors that had previously been taken for granted, and adapting to those changes made 2020 a very difficult year. On the bright side, many people reaffirmed the importance of family while spending so many hours at home. I imagine that many of you took on challenges and studied in new ways during your final year of school, such as by attending classes online.

For the UACJ Group, as well, 2020 was a challenging year, as operations were seriously impacted by the global pandemic. Thankfully, our employees understand that the Group’s products are essential for industries and people’s livelihoods around the world, so all of them worked together to ensure that the Group could continue doing business while giving top priority to preventing infections in the workplace. We also contributed to our communities by donating desk partitions made with aluminum and antibacterial face shields to public facilities and hospitals. Viewing the rapid changes happening around us as opportunities, we took on all sorts of new challenges during the year, such as implementing a telecommuting system to allow employees to work from home.

Meanwhile, we redefined the Group’s corporate philosophy in 2020. It is made up of Our Purpose, Our Vision, and Our Values. Our Purpose is to “contribute to society by using raw materials to manufacture products that enhance prosperity and sustainability.” Our Vision is stated as follows: “Aluminum is our passion. It inspires our work in building a better world and a healthier environment.” Finally, Our Values are “respect and understand your associates,” “embrace honesty and foresight,” and “be curious and challenging.”
To realize this philosophy, we created the UACJ Way as a set of basic guidelines for all of the Group’s members. In each workplace where you are assigned from now, I hope all of you will thrive and contribute to the Group’s competitiveness with your youthful energy and fresh ideas, while always keeping in mind the three values of the UACJ Way. I would like to discuss each of these values in a little more detail.

The first value of the UACJ Way is to respect and understand your associates. The UACJ Group is now a global enterprise with more than ten thousand employees. For all of the Group’s diverse members to produce results together, everyone should communicate openly with each other while mutually recognizing that each member thinks and values things a little differently. To do that, it is important to appreciate each person’s strong points. All of you will meet many different people from now, so please make a point of discovering the strengths of your colleagues rather than their weaknesses as you work alongside each other.

The second value of the UACJ Way is to embrace honesty and foresight. Over UACJ’s long history, employees from all divisions, whether R&D, manufacturing, or sales, worked closely with each other to meet customers’ expectations for quality, delivery times, and costs. As a result of those past efforts to manufacture products in an honest manner, the UACJ Group has earned the trust of its customers. To manufacture products in an honest manner, we believe it is essential to take actions based on five basic principles: understand how our factories operate, know our products inside and out, recognize how everything actually works, act rationally, and make decisions based on established rules. The first two things I would like our newly hired employees to focus on are learning about our factories and customers.

At the same time, it is important to develop foresight in order to anticipate how our operating environment will change in the next five to ten years, set your career goals that far into the future, and start preparing now. Envisioning an exciting future with a positive outlook will be a key to your success.

Finally, the third value of the UACJ Way is to be curious and challenging. As we enter a post-pandemic era, people’s lives will be different, and business conditions and practices could change significantly. To effectively adapt to such broad trends and provide products and services that society really needs, every employee will need to think outside the box and always take on challenges with a sense of curiosity. You have the advantage of a youthful and fresh perspective, so if you believe something can be improved or more can be accomplished in your workplace, do not hesitate to discuss that with your supervisor and other experienced colleagues, and begin by making improvements in your own work environment.

In addition to these three values, the UACJ Way is founded on safety and compliance, which are basic principles of conduct for manufacturers. I decided to discuss this topic now rather than from the outset because I want all of you to remember what I have to say.

Safety is so fundamental that people routinely convey it with a greeting in some countries. In Germany, for example, the word, glückauf, was originally used as a greeting by miners to express their desire to return safely from the mine. In Japan, members of the manufacturing industry often greet each other with the phrase, go-anzen ni, which literally means “stay safe.” At UACJ, too, employees greet each other with this phrase every day as a way of maintaining a shared awareness of safety. I would like all of you, as well, to wholeheartedly greet your co-workers this way in your workplaces, as it reflects our long-standing tradition of placing priority on safety in everything we do while taking responsibility for one’s own safety.

Compliance is a minimum requirement of any organization operating in society. Accordingly, UACJ complies with laws concerning health and safety, the environment, and product quality. We also adhere to various rules, including our own internal regulations as well as requirements set by customers. As new employees, all of you should begin learning these rules and make sure to follow them going forward.

In the future, the world is expected to change at a faster pace than ever before, especially with respect to the environment and digitalization. This will create huge opportunities for our business. For example, aluminum has great potential for environmental applications because it is lightweight, very thermally conductive, and, most importantly, easy to recycle. We also foresee opportunities to increase productivity and improve workplace practices in innovative new ways by effective making use of digital technologies.

All of you have grown up with digital technologies as members of the digital native generation. I hope you take advantage of the changes that arise in the future, pursue a wide range of challenges, and bring new energy to the UACJ Group without being bound by past conventions and ideas. I have big expectations for all of you.

From today, I would like each of you to participate in the UACJ Group as a team player and strive to make the most of your individual abilities in your job position. In the spirit of our new slogan, “Aluminum lightens the world,” let’s work together to bring solutions to society by manufacturing outstanding aluminum products. Aiming for the same goals as a team, all of us can help produce results by doing our utmost in our respective roles.

I would like to conclude by asking all of you to take good care of your health and pay close attention to safety in your workplace in the years ahead. Please remember that maintaining good health and well-being is essential for all members of society. You have joined the Group during a global pandemic, so I hope you never forget the importance of health and safety from this day onward. I wish you great success in your careers as members of the UACJ Group and as working adults. Thank you.