A Stronger Founda-tion for Growth

Toyobo was founded as a textile
company in 1882.
Over the years, the Company has
adapted its business in accordance
with the changing times.
The most recent facet of this adaptation is a concentration of management resources in the fields of Films and Functional Polymers,
Industrial Materials, and Life Science, specialty businesses that draw on Toyobo's unique core technologies
in polymerization,
modification, processing and biotechnology.
With this focus, we have moved into
an era of accelerating growth.

In the 1950s Toyobo began working on micro organisms as it needed a way of treating waste water from one its plants that processed pulp for rayon. Scientists in its laboratories discovered a type of yeast that consumed sugar in the waste water; thus substantially reducing the biochemical oxygen demand (BOD) level. Toyobo then filtered out the yeast and marketed it as an animal food. As well, the proportion of nucleic acids in the yeast was discovered to be extremely high; therefore, they were separated out, and after research was carried out, processed for use in food seasonings.

In the 1960s, based on its world first success in commercializing uricase from Candida sp., Toyobo focused on research in the field of clinical chemistry. Toyobo now markets 60 kinds of material enzymes for diagnostic reagents. As with all its products, these reagents are of the finest quality available.

In the 1970s, Toyobo entered the molecular biology business. Its products in this area include various kinds of restriction endonucleases and modifying enzymes that have been derived from the remarkable technologies it developed in fermentation and purification over the previous decades.

Fermenter of yeast(1950s)

In 1997, the Quality Management System of the Tsuruga Bio Plant and the Tsuruga Institute of Biotechnology was approved in the USA, Germany, Holland, Australia and Japan by Lloyd's Register of Quality Assurance Limited (LRGA) as meeting the requirements of ISO9001: as are applicable to the development and manufacture of enzymes. Toyobo are also proceeding with R&D and manufacturing activities through the application of the environment management system of the Toyobo Tsuruga plant that was certified in 1999 by JAB and JIC as meeting the requirements of ISO 14001.

Today, Toyobo is able to provide scientist across the world with a wide variety of unique materials and reagent for application to lifescience research and industrial processes. Information about Toyobo's exclusive enzymes and reagents is available on this web site.

Toyobo looks forward to supporting your research and business enterprises with its technology and products.

Tsuruga Institute of Biotechnology