DOWA Electronics Materials responds to the market needs by supplying semiconductors, battery materials, conductive and magnetic materials, capitalizing on its hi-tech technologies for producing thin film, high density, crystal growth, particle shape control and fine particles.
"Carrier powders" are magnetic particles used for office copiers and play an important role to impact the quality of printed images. We increased our supply capacity by approximately 50% in 2011 to strengthen our business activities. We handle clean carriers in response to environmental regulations and adopted an efficient production system to automate the production lines and save energy.
We also increased our production capacity of spherical silver powders that are used for electrodes of solar cells to 100 tons per month and are considering increase of their facilities by closely watching the demand trends in 2012.
In addition to our new business area of commercialization of catalysis to purify exhaust gases, we developed our new "Silver Nano-ink" printing technology. DOWA Electronics Materials expect to introduce the technology into the fields of RFID antennas, solar cells and touch panels.
We aim at being the top company in a wide variety of fields, building on our product families that are backed up by our cutting-edge technologies. We also strive to develop new businesses through active investment and contribute to building an eco-friendly society through energy saving and reduction of CO2.
Dowa IP Creation Co., Ltd.
Address: 7 Chikkosakae-machi, Minami-ku, Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture 702-8053
Employees: 134 (as of the end of March 2012)
Iron Functions Support for Manufacturing
DOWA IP CREATION (DIP) was established in 1965 as a business to utilize iron residues after sulfuric acid is produced from iron sulfide ores. Iron is a material that has been used for a long time and still has potential to expand its application without limits when advanced abilities are added to it through many types of processing. We now handle three types of functional materials as our main products. "Iron powder" is used for various applications such as welding, 
metallurgy and soil remediation. "Carrier powder" is requisite as developer materials for copiers. "Z iron" is used for rust inhibitor and surface processing. We endeavor to achieve a world top level in every process of designing, developing, manufacturing and quality management, aimed at supplying best quality products, making best use of properties of iron.
Opening of the Cutting-edge Carrier Powder Plant Anticipating Market Needs
A copier transfers fine powders called toner on a piece of paper to print. Carrier powders play a role of carrying those toners. DIP has been highly evaluated by copier manufacturers whose quality requirements are exacting. DIP always plans in advance by anticipating three years ahead to supply carrier powders with outstanding magnetic, particle and flow properties and degree of density in a timely manner.
We also started to put a mass production system in place to stably supply quality products in 2010 and completed a new plant in November 2011. This plant features cutting-edge 
facilities of automation, utilization of waste heat and real time display as well as efficient production processes that capitalize on horizontal flow lines of a seven-floor building. This will greatly contribute to labor and energy saving. In addition to environmental measures, this plant is planned to improve safety and comfort of employees. Thus, productivity dramatically increased by 150%. We are operating this plant as a facility to respond to the market demand for the long term.
We newly constructed all of the buildings and facilities of the carrier powder plant by introducing plant technologies that can quickly respond to the needs of our customers to enable thorough quality management. The plant is designed to visualize operational statuses, for improved carrying from storage to other storage, considering work flow line for both labor saving and security. The main point in designing the plant was how much we can implement the solutions recommended from the R & D, manufacturing, sales and administration departments for the plant in a clearly visible manner into the new plant, based on the technical achievements brought by all of our antecessors. With support from relevant DOWA departments, we succeeded in building a human-friendly and eco-friendly plant with future potential.
Katuhiko Mitsuda
New Plant Construction Project Team, Second Manufacturing Department
Raising Environmental Awareness through Daily Activities
While achieving a great result through environmental measures on the process side, such as fuel conversion, introduction of highly efficient energy saving equipment and expansion of recycling, DIP also strives to raise environmental awareness of each employee through daily activities. For instance, we use carbon offset products for our working clothes and our helmets are manufactured with green materials. We also use wood pellet stoves to heat our offices. We actively participate in the environmental efforts by Okayama Prefecture and Okayama City such as "smart" commuting by bicycles and the use of idling stop practices for motor vehicles. We will continue to exercise ingenuity to raise awareness of our employees and encourage them to act spontaneously on environmental issues through these activities.
I am in charge of reviewing evaluation methods necessary for development. As I support development from the equipment side, I interact with many themes, people, units and devices, learning a lot every day. I enjoy my work. To gain the knowledge I need, many people extend support to me. Even though I am young, I am allowed to challenge many things and I feel quite accomplished at my workplace. I am very grateful for people around me. I have just started the assignment, but I would like to establish new evaluation methods soon and hope I can provide feedback into manufacturing methods. I hope I can also help with patent applications.
Haruka Seki
Carrier Development Department
Further Fighting against Global Warming
DIP has approximately 150 product lines of iron powders and supplies products to the industrial field of welding and automobile parts materials, the consumer field of disposable body warmers and the environmental field of soil remediation materials. We produce iron powders by reduction of iron oxide with coke and heat treatment. As part of global warming measures, we converted fuel used in the manufacturing process from heavy oil to natural gas in 2011. As we had to continue construction work while operating the plant to continuously supply to users, we conducted pipeline work and replacement of burners for approximately five months based on careful planning. Through the effort, we anticipate annual reduction of CO2 exhaust of 2,185 tons.
