EBARA has grown together with the development of Japan's social and industrial infrastructure. Meanwhile, population growth worldwide and the improvement of living standards in line with economic development is expected to steadily grow demand for water and energy, waste treatment, and information infrastructure development, particularly in emerging market countries.
It is into such an expanding market that EBARA is extending businesses globally. We believe that it is possible to expand our businesses even further by pinpointing the issues facing each business area and providing products and services that will help enrich the everyday lives of people all over the world.
Efforts related to new businesses
The expansion of the aquaculture industry has led to a growing water pollution problem caused by conventional open-water fish farming. Focusing on this issue and on the growing worldwide demand for marine resources, the EBARA Group launched the Aquaculture Business Promotion Project.
Inland recirculating aquaculture refers to aquaculture conducted in an environment that has been artificially created on land. Expectations that it will help improve quality and productivity through control of the farming environment by humans and reduce the burden on the environment have attracted attention to this method. On the other hand, inland recirculating aquaculture also has disadvantages, such as the high initial costs of facility set-up and high running costs, such as electricity consumption. Finding solutions to these disadvantages is expected to result in demand for inland recirculating aquaculture as a sustainable system.
EBARA has entered into a capital and business alliance with Regional Fish Institute, Ltd. by underwriting a third-party allocation of shares in that company. With the application of technologies such as fluid control and thermal control that we have cultivated since our foundation, EBARA will aim to realize aquaculture systems that are friendly to the environment, that are safe and secure without the threat of pathogens, and that are able to offer safe, secure, and stable quality and quantity. In doing so, we will pursue our business with the goal of contributing to the industrialization of inland recirculating aquaculture and to the protection of the ocean.
In January 2020, EBARA invested a total of 1 billion yen in Spiber Inc. (“Spiber”) for joint research in biotechnology to support an oil-free society. Spiber is engaged in the development and manufacture of brewed protein, which is expected to become key sustainable next-generation materials, without relying on depleting resources for their main components.
Brewed Protein refers to protein materials produced from plant-derived biomass using Spiber’s proprietary fermentation process. This production process does not rely on oil or other fossil fuels for its primary raw materials. The characteristics of Brewed Protein can be modified according to end-product needs through an ongoing process of molecular-level refinements that is not dissimilar to the process of evolution. These materials have substantial potential to help industries eliminate their dependence on microplastic and animal-derived substances. They also show great potential for sure in lightweight components in the automobile and transportation industries.
Breaking society’s dependence on oil will require the global-scale popularization of biotechnology that enables the production of various materials from synthetic proteins. However, the high cost of manufacturing is a significant barrier to the practical application of biotechnology. EBARA is currently striving to solve this issue as a matter of urgency. On the other hand, by working with Spiber to enhance our knowledge of the cultivation of structural proteins, we are growing the seeds of new business in the biotechnology industry, an area that EBARA has not ventured into until now. Leveraging new and accumulated knowledge, we hope to propose manufacturing process innovations and solutions in new fields.
The EBARA Group will actively continue developing and cultivating technologies required to achieve our mission, “Technology. Passion. Support our globe,” and to develop human resources who will contribute to that mission. As the foundations for these efforts, we will leverage digital transformation (DX) to put into practice highly efficient, industry-leading management, and business operations. Leveraging data and digital technologies, we will transform products, services, and business models on a global scale, establish our operational infrastructure through the company-wide introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) to support such transformation, and build optimized operational flows and rules.
Transform "monozukuri" (manufacturing) and “kotozukuri” (value creation) through 3D digitization.
Build up information infrastructure for groupwide operations on a global scale.