On February 9, 2018, Air Water signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals to acquire the all-issued shares of Japan Pionics (capital: 300 million with 48 employees as of March 31, 2017) which is fully affiliated by Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals and produces/sells gas purifiers and waste gas abatement equipment of dry type. The amount of purchase is not disclosed to the public.

With effect from February 28 which falls on the share transfer date, the company will be consolidated by Air Water. Negotiations had been made behind the scenes since 2015 when Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals approached to Air Water to transfer all the shares of Japan Pionics which was doing a non-core business for Mitsubishi.

With this affiliation Air Water will be able to sell gases and equipment totally from the supply side the waste gas disposition by adding newly to its product lineup the gas-related equipment which is indispensable for the production of semiconductor and LCD.

Air Water comments, “The expansion and improvement of equipment for semiconductor and LCD will enable us to enlarge the scope of business channels. At the same time, we can strengthen our competitiveness utilizing the synergy effects of Japan Pionics’ versatile technologies in purification and engineering combined with Air Water’s gas technologies.”

In 1962, Japan Pionics started as Japan Pure Hydrogen (renamed Japan Pionics in 1980) fully owned by Nippon Gas Chemicals (now Mitsubishi Gas Chemicals) for the production and sales of high-purity hydrogen separation units applying its membrane permeation technology of palladium alloys.

As of the end of January 2018, Japan Pionics was producing/selling various gas purifiers and waste gas disposing equipment represented by the “VP Series” of adsorption-type purifier at normal temperature. The business scale in the latest term amounted to 3.075 billion (FY2017 ending March). The segmental ratio is 30% for purifiers and 70% for the waste gas disposition equipment.

Air Water’s purifier business is at the runner-up position following Taiyo Nippon Sanso in Japan, and has these years been reinforcing the sales of a large-type purifier (10,000 m3/h class) to semiconductor and LCD plants East Asian manufacturers in China, Korea and Taiwan. In addition, it deals with gas purifiers of getter type and inline purifiers for supply to hydrogen purifiers of membrane permeation of palladium alloys or rare gases. As for the business of waste gas treating equipment, the company, a time-honored manufacturer since establishment in 1972, has been dealing with such equipment as with combustion, catalyst-heating decomposition or wet system, as represented by the sales and replacement of the detoxifying agent of the dry abatement equipment named “Pioclean”.

An accumulated number of equipment sold in total has reached 3000, of which 90% was a dry type. From now on Air Water as the Air Water group intends to expand the scale of sales channel of machine and equipment.