Iwatani marked a good consolidated sales up by 7.1% and the ordinary profit up by 10.6% respectively comparing with the result of last year. Iwatani’s sales of industrial gases and machinery amounted to 151.4 billion yen up by 4.4% with the operating profit of 4.7 billion yen up by 20.7%.

Despite the continual rise of production cost due to the electricity rate hike, the sales of industrial gases like oxygen and nitrogen remained at a constant pace thanks to the recovering trend of the domestic manufacturers including the automobile and smartphone related industries and also to the increasing demand abroad including China and Southeast Asian countries.

As for the hydrogen business, Iwatani started to operate its third liquid hydrogen (LH2) plant in Yamaguchi Prefecture and made efforts to obtain new customers particularly of LH2 around the plant location and in the neighboring regions.

When it comes to helium of which demand had been getting tight, Iwatani started to deliver helium of Qatar origin from July and built up a constant supply system enhancing stable shipments to both home and abroad, through the establishment of local business partner to be engaged in the logistics and filling operations of helium. The handling ratio of helium has so far been 60% for the US origin and 40% for the Qatar origin, but it will probably be reversed this year.

Naoki Ueha Vice-President commented about the industrial gas business, “Our industrial gas business with oxygen and nitrogen has grown not owing to the last-minute demand before the tax rise, but thanks to the contribution of campaign sale. Therefore, no backlash of last-minute demand has appeared since April including the cylinder business. The electricity rate hike is said to have caused a 10% increase on the average over the industry, and we have to ask our customers to understand our price hike from now on. The American source of helium has recovered and there will be no change in the volume of imported helium. Regarding the H2 filling station, we are constructing at a good pace ten H2 filling locations from last year through to this year.”

Iwatani’s sales of machinery and equipment decreased in supply to the semiconductor industry, but grew as a whole thanks to the last-minute demand in the machinery-related business as well as the success in the large-scale business including the large compressors to Kyushu research institute and the H2-related big projects.

Iwatani’s primary business of total energy increased by 8% amounting to 386.7 billion yen. The emergency LP gas doubled over last year amounting to 420 trucks, while the LNG business stayed flat amounting to about 25 tons following the previous year. Masao Nomura President said, “It provided a strong impetus as the starting year of our Mid-term Business Plan 15. We are to make this second year as a further strong footstep aiming to ripen our business.” The business result during the subsequent fiscal term is forecasted to be 317.2 billion yen (up by 2.8%) of sales, with an ordinary profit of 3.5 billion yen (up by 0.5%).