Business Strategy
Our group’s business segments focus on paper, white paperboard, performance materials, and pulp. We meet wideranging needs through manufacturing that integrates the production and research locations of Hokuetsu Corporation and Group companies.
Overview of Main Businesses
Paper Business
Our main product varieties in the paper segment include printing and communication paper used in books, magazines, catalogs, and brochures. Within our lineup of high-quality and diverse products, our color woodfree paper is the top domestic brand, widely favored by customers. The Hokuetsu brand is widely recognized both domestically and internationally. In the paper segment, we boast an overwhelming export share among Japanese manufacturers.
White Paperboard Business
We offer a high-quality and diverse range of products including commercial printed materials for packaging, trading cards, and POP displays, as well as paper for publication covers, paper for text publications, and processed base paper. We are also advancing the development of primary food containers, plasticsubstitute containers, and packaging materials made with white paperboard. In Packaging and Paper Processing, Hokuetsu Package Co., Ltd. manufactures and sells high-quality paper-based containers, functional paper products, cosmetic paper products, liquid containers, and more.
Performance Materials Business
In the Functional Paper sector, we are developing specialty paper and functional materials that will open up new possibilities for paper. We offer a wide range of products that meet customers’ increasingly diverse needs, including industrial paper, communication paper, specialty processed products, and specialty fiberboard. We also produce and sell corrugated medium base paper*. We are expanding sales of thin and high-strength reinforced media and are working to reduce the weight of containerboard.
＊Corrugated medium base paper is the wavy piece of paper sandwiched between two flat sheets of paper when containerboard is viewed from the side.
Pulp Business
In the Pulp sector, we are constructing an international supply structure by holding core manufacturing and sales locations overseas. Canada-based Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. (Al-Pac), which mainly produces hardwood pulp, boasts a production capacity that is among the largest in North America. It also operates a power generation business that supplies and sells electricity generated from biomass to the power grid in Alberta Province.
Reorganization
To adapt to changes in the business environment of the paper and pulp industry, in April 2025 the Group reorganized the Domestic Paper & White Paperboard Sales Division and the Global Trading Division into the Paper Sales Division and the White Paperboard Sales Division, creating a structure further geared to sales channel expansion and the characteristics of demand. We also moved the Paper Cup Business Development Office under the White Paperboard Sales Division, with the goal of maximizing synergies between the white paperboard business and packaging business.
Shifting the Business Portfolio
While securing stable profit on the foundation of printing, communication paper, and other areas of the paper business, the Group is actively expanding into new business domains through M&A and business alliances domestically and internationally to address contracting demand and changes in market structure under the advance of digitalization.In recent years, along with the expansion of our overseas business we are expanding business into new growth sectors including containerboard base paper and packaging and paper processing products for use as alternatives to plastics.
