News Release

Japan Pulp & Paper (M) Sdn. Bhd. (Head Office: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Managing Director: Guan Swee Kwee), a subsidiary of Japan Pulp & Paper Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Tokyo, Japan; President: Akihiko Watanabe), has established OVOL New Energy Sdn. Bhd. (Head Office: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; “ONE”) with the business having already commenced its operations in the collecting and selling of Palm Kernel Shells (PKS).

On the Malay Peninsula, located in Southeast Asia, a large number of oil palm trees are grown for food and industrial oil applications, with many oil extraction plants in the area. PKS (shells of the oil palm tree that remain after extracting palm oil), which has high potential as a biomass energy resource, has attracted international attention in recent years. In Japan as well, biomass power plants whose business plans have been approved under the government’s FIT (Feed-in Tariff Scheme for Renewable Energy) scheme are expected to go into full-scale operation one after another and accordingly it is anticipated that the demand for PKS will further increase in the future.

ONE has a stockyard in Port Kelang, Malaysia’s largest trading port located in the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, where the company collects and sorts PKS produced at extraction plants and exports them to overseas countries. In addition to our subsidiary, Noda Bio Power JP Co.,Ltd. (Head Office: Iwate, located in Northeast Japan; President: Naohisa Ota), which operates a woody biomass power plant, the company is also planning to supply PKS to other woody biomass power facilities outside of the Group.

The establishment of ONE enables us to further strengthen the system to stably supply biomass fuels in Japan. We will strive to contribute to the reduction of the environmental burden on society as a whole and establish a recycle-based society by increasing the volume of PKS that we handle.