Since January the UK has a new Free Trade Agreement with the world’s third largest economy, opening even more opportunities for UK companies to forge partnerships and generate new business in this dynamic Asian country.
Marking this exciting new chapter in trading relations between the UK and Japan, the Department for International Trade and Tech Nation are delighted to announce a launch of first of its kind event called ‘Reverse pitching series’ and invite innovative technology companies in the UK to explore the business opportunities in Japan.
In each session of this series a renowned Japanese blue-chip company is selected as a speaker. In this session, ITOCHU Corporation will present the technical issues they are currently facing and where they are looking for solutions from UK tech companies. ITOCHU are also keen to discover where they can join with UK innovative technology companies to explore the market in Japan and across the world leveraging their global network. Should UK companies identify solutions they can offer, there will be separate one to one meetings set up after this session. As this is organised in a business matching format, the discussion is expected to be focused and effective, and we hope that it is likely to lead to partnerships.
Message from ITOCHU Corporation
With approximately 100 offices in 62 countries, ITOCHU is a Japanese trading and investment company engaging in domestic trading, import/export, and overseas trading of various products such as textile, machinery, metals, minerals, energy, chemicals, food, general products, realty, information and communications technology, finance, as well as business investment in Japan and overseas.
The “Sampo-yoshi (meaning good for the seller, good for the buyer, good for society)” spirit represents our unwavering ideal as a merchant. In keeping with this focus, rather than seeking to achieve a single target, we aim to achieve “all the priorities:” short-term and medium- to long-term targets, economic value and environmental / social value, targets for investors and shareholders, for business partners and financial institutions, for society and employees and their families. Steadily building up trust and results in this way is the company’s approach that aims to sustainably enhance corporate value.
The UK is one of the most important and active markets for ITOCHU. In addition to ITOCHU’s trading businesses, there are quite a few group companies such as KwikFit (fast-fit specialists), First Response Finance (auto finance company), Plastribution (plastics raw materials distributor), Hiyacar (car sharing platform) and JustPark (parking space matching platform) to name a few.
Depending on the industry and our operation we are expecting to create synergies with the advanced companies in the UK.
