■Wavelock Holdings＜7940＞ Company Overview

(2) Advanced technology business

The advanced technology business is divided into the decoration & display field (metallic decorative film, highly transparent multilayer film), the converting field, and others, and accounts for over 50% of sales in the decoration & display field.

The metal-tone decorative film, which accounts for the majority of sales in the decoration & display field, has a 6-layer structure in which special metals are evaporated onto PET (polyethylene terephthalate) film, PMMA (acrylic resin) sheets are layered on the surface side and ABS film are layered on the underside to maintain weather resistance, and bonded using a dry lamination* method. The film not only has a planar shape, but it can also be made into a three-dimensional shape by using various processing techniques such as special-shaped extrusion molding, film insert molding, and vacuum molding. Advantages seen in comparison with plated products include the fact that rust does not occur and contributes to weight reduction of the vehicle body, and in addition to the fact that environmental load is low, such as not generating waste liquid during manufacturing, it also has high transmission properties of radio waves and light, and is excellent in moldability and design. These advantages have been evaluated, and adoption is spreading for interior and exterior parts of automobiles and motorcycles.

* A processing method in which an adhesive is applied to a film used as the base material, dried in a drying oven, and then crimped and bonded to another film.

For automobiles, there is a track record of sales not only domestically but also in Asia, Europe, America, etc., but since the beginning of 2022, sales to North America have increased rapidly, such as being adopted as exterior parts for electric vehicles by American manufacturers. For motorcycles, demand is growing in India and Southeast Asia for emblems. The manufacturing base was a two-site system, the Koga Plant (film manufacturing) and the Nagoya Plant (parts molding processing), but in addition to establishing a new Nagoya Plant 2 (parts molding processing) in 2022/9 to respond to growing demand, the Ichinoseki Plant was relocated and expanded in 2023/4 to establish a system to increase film production, and a processing plant for finished parts products was also established in Ohio to respond to customer requests in the United States.

Among metallic decorative films, Akzo Nobel N.V. (Akzo Nobel), a major Dutch chemical manufacturer, can be cited as a competitor for automobile exteriors, but it seems that there are still few entrants. Also, in addition to the metal evaporation method adopted by the company and Akzo Nobel, there are also transfer methods, etc. for manufacturing metal-tone decorative films. The transfer method has excellent mass productivity, so the cost is low, but since weather resistance is weak and there are many cases where a separate hard coat is required for automobile exteriors, the company sees the metal evaporation method as advantageous.

As for highly transparent multilayer films, we are focusing on expanding sales in the automotive field (center information display (CID), head-up display (HUD) *, etc.) where interior displays are becoming larger by utilizing strengths such as high optical characteristics, low distortion, and dustproof characteristics and impact resistance. Although there are many competitors such as Mitsubishi Gas Chemical (4182), etc., product characteristics have been evaluated and adoption results have been shown by European automobile manufacturers such as Volkswagen.

*HUD is a system that displays various information such as vehicle speed and navigation ahead of the driver's line of sight by projecting images onto the windshield of a car. By projecting information close to the center of the driver's field of view, the burden on the driver due to line of sight movement is reduced, and it is mounted mainly on luxury cars as a system that supports safe driving.

The converting field includes nonwoven printing of medical poultices and printing/silicon treatment processing on release films, etc., and although the sales scale is small, it is a stable source of profit. In addition, they also purchase and sell diffusers and light guide plates for LCD TV monitors, opening tape for food packaging materials, etc.

(Author: FISCO Visiting Analyst Joe Sato)