Japanese consumers demand increasingly diverse food choices. Japan is known as one of the world’s largest food importing nations, with food preferences expected to rapidly become even more diverse. This increase in demand for food diversity has made Japan a major target market for the Worldwide Food Materials Division, and accordingly we are working to import agricultural products from around the world such as frozen fruits and dried vegetables. The Nishimoto name, identified especially with fruit, has come to be regarded highly by industry people, and the Company has established an overwhelming presence in the market.

Major products of the Worldwide Food Materials Division have come to include frozen strawberries, frozen blueberries, and frozen mangoes. We now lay claim to being Japan's top importer of frozen strawberries in terms of quantity, and as such we work to provide food that consumers can enjoy without any safety or health concerns. Doing so is of key importance to us and has enabled us to gain the trust of our customers. We are able to maintain a stable supply of frozen blueberries, and are constantly seeking new mango varieties and growing regions in an attempt to develop new sources of supply. In recent years, going beyond our business of importing to Japan, we have been fully leveraging the overseas networks that we have developed for our new business of supplying third-party nations with products that meet Japanese standards.

Our success is built on more than just our import operations, and is bolstered by our unique business model which involves us in operations that go from the development of new supply sources, to product management, to quality control, to logistics. The main production regions we import from are in the United States and Canada, followed by China, Thailand, and other Asian countries. However, we are now engaged in the first moves to develop future production bases in Central and South America, and in other undeveloped regions. Developing business in these countries and regions will enable us to secure supply centers for export to Japan and thus enable us to satisfy the changing food preferences of Japanese consumers. By providing guidance to producers regarding production management and quality control, we are constructing a system for a stable supply of high quality imported agricultural products.

We work with our clients to pursue joint development of new foodstuffs and processed goods to make available a wide variety of foods and ingredients to a long list of companies, including food manufacturers, food service companies, major general merchandise stores, and convenience store chains. We remain obsessive about food safety, security and tastiness as we not only cater to the demands of consumers in Japan for increasingly diverse food choices, but set our sights on overseas markets, too. This ever-attentive focus on products and customers gives the Worldwide Food Materials Division a competitive strength that truly distinguishes us in our industry.