Rengo Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Kita-ku, Osaka; President & CEO: Kiyoshi Otsubo) announces that its Takefu Plant (Echizen-shi, Fukui Prefecture) has become the first plant in Japan to introduce a system that achieves the complete combustion of VOCs.

The Takefu Plant is a unique facility that produces a wide range of functional materials such as cellophane made from wood pulp.  Cellophane is a natural material with excellent properties for packaging including having an attractive luster, high transparency, and being easy to tear.  It also has good biodegradability, making cellophane an environmentally-friendly material.
In an effort to not only make environmentally-friendly products but also to employ environmentally-friendly production processes, the Takefu Plant switched its boiler fuel from heavy fuel oil to liquid natural gas (LNG) in April of this year.  This change is expected to reduce annual CO2 emissions by 4,500 tons (equal to 24% of the plant's FY2008 emissions).
The plant also performs processes to coat various functional pharmaceutical products with plastic films such as polyester and nylon, and when organic solvents are used in these processes, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are emitted.
The Air Pollution Control Law calls on manufacturers to implement voluntary measures in addition to those required by law, to control releases to the atmosphere of VOCs.  In response, the Takefu Plant installed a gas-fired once-through boiler to enable switching to LNG fuel, and also introduced Japan's very first VOC combustion system, developed by Kawasaki Thermal Engineering Co., Ltd.  Since then, trials using the once-through boiler for processing gases that contain various VOCs have been conducted, and recently the system achieved the complete decomposition of VOCs, verifying that emissions can be reduced to below the detection limit of 20 ppmC.

Rengo has been actively taking measures to reduce CO2 emissions from both its products and manufacturing processes by making packaging materials lighter, with the slogan “Less Weight, Less Carbon”.  The reduction in companywide CO2 emissions in FY2009 reached 28% of FY1990 levels.
Rengo has set new targets of cutting CO2 emissions by 32% of the FY1990 level by FY2020 and by 50% by FY2050.  Going forward, Rengo will continue to conserve the resources and energy required for performing all of its business activities, with the aim of preserving the global environment.