Toyo Ink Realigns US Printing Ink Business

Toyo Ink International Corp., the holding company for the Americas operations of the Toyo Ink Group, announced today a strategic realignment of its printing inks operations, a move designed to better align the company’s marketing and production activities and improve its ability to bring new products, technologies and services to its global customer base. The realignment will enable better consolidation of its product offerings, promoting a more coordinated market approach and reduced operational redundancies.

Under the new organization, wholly-owned subsidiary Toyo Ink America, LLC, based in Addison, IL, will absorb the packaging ink and polymers businesses of its sister-subsidiary Toyo Ink Technologies, LLC, and merge them with its existing commercial printing inks operation. The acquisition includes Toyo Ink Technologies’ production operations and its flexographic inks and polymers manufacturing facility in Bryan, TX. Thereafter, Toyo Ink Technologies will be formally dissolved.

This realignment follows the April 2010 Toyo acquisition of Fluid Ink Technology’s brands and intellectual property ink formulations, which were assets of Toyo Ink Technologies. Integrating both the fluid and paste ink operations under a single company not only allows Toyo Ink to secure an improved foothold in the printing inks market, but also achieve greater synergy in sales and service delivery.

“This consolidation allows us to drive the growth of our global customer base through further coordinated marketing efforts and improved cross- and up-selling opportunities,” said Mamoru Sasajima, CEO of the newly transformed Toyo Ink America. “We are positioning ourselves to better support our customers’ needs with a broader and more comprehensive lineup of printing products and services, while also enhancing our ability to capture a bigger share of the Americas printing market.”

In conjunction with its newly acquired Texas facility, Toyo Ink America engages in the production of paste inks at its head location in Addison, IL. This facility expects to undergo a major site expansion that will double its size by the end of 2011, as the company forges ahead with plans to develop and produce ink systems with more efficiency here in the US. The integration of production functions enables Toyo Ink to maximize resource efficiencies as well as strengthen the company’s competitiveness by boosting overall productivity and the development platform on which to carry on its business.

“Toyo Ink is fully committed to ensuring our customers in North and South America a steady supply of consistently high quality products and reliable service well into the future,” said John Copeland, division president of the new printing inks unit at Toyo Ink America. “The new organization will allow us to benefit from greater cross-division coordination of production functions and optimization of product and information flow.”

The newly formed printing ink division of Toyo Ink America will focus on the sales, development and production of print materials and solutions for the commercial printing, flexible packaging, paper packaging and label printing markets. The production and R&D arm of Toyo Ink America will be directed by Yasuo Koga as manufacturing director. Koji Ueno will oversee the company’s chemical division, which includes the adhesives and functional polymers business, as division director.

Toyo Ink Mfg. America, LLC, based in Teaneck, New Jersey will retain its function as an import company for organic pigments and specialty materials and chemicals.

The Toyo Ink Group, a longtime leader in printing and packaging innovation throughout Asia, is looking to bolster its position in the US inks sector, a strategy in line with the Group’s expansion plans, both regionally and globally.