Message from the Representative Director

The year since I assumed the post of President in December 2023 was one filled with challenges and learning. After verifying and deliberating the treatment of financial results for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2024 with our audit corporation, we disclosed corrections to financial results for past fiscal years (from the fiscal year ended September 30, 2021 to the fiscal year ended September 30, 2024) on January 6, 2025.
We deeply apologize for the considerable inconvenience and concern that this matter has caused our shareholders and other related parties. At the continued session of the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders that convened in February, 2025, we received numerous constructive questions from shareholders on “what we should do going forward” rather than simply “what the causes were behind the revised financial results.” Through this experience, I had a renewed sense of the weight that accompanies responsibility for corporate management as well as newfound determination towards making that food for future improvements and growth.

Based on the matter mentioned above, having recognized risk management anew as a priority management issue, Yokorei made the decision to revisit the ideal nature of risk management companywide. More specifically, in January 2025, we installed a new risk management committee to replace preexisting functions and put a system in place to elevate risk management above previous levels. This committee, chaired by me as the Company’s Representative Director, establishes and operates sustainable, effective, and organizational mechanisms conducive to the prevention and early detection of and proper response to risk while simultaneously engaging in the verification of cases that have already occurred and the prevention of their reoccurrence.

I first joined Yokorei in 1986. When I started college, I initially wanted to become a police officer. However, I came upon a classified for Yokorei by chance at the Student Affairs Office. This is how my career at the Company got started. My first assignment was the Nagasaki Sales Office. Purchasing and selling marine products in the market for the main purpose of conducting freezing operation at the Nagasaki Plant adjacent to the office (currently the Nagasaki Logistics Center) and holding onto various frozen fish for sale were my main duties. I also experienced onsite work in the form of heading to the market at 4:00 every morning to purchase a mass quantity of fish weighing from 150 to 200 tons. The labor involved was so heavy that I shed 10 kg of body weight in the first month. My experience with coming to terms with harsh realities would continue as a sales personnel member through multiple transfers to our sales offices across Japan. Along the way, I developed an acute sense of how that work environment trained me, shaped my insight into people, and taught me the importance of bonds of trust. I have since experienced a variety of positions, such as the Corporate Officer posts of General Manager of the Kyushu Group and General Manager of the Internal Audit Office and the Director posts of General Manager of Domestic Production Area Sales Group and Chief of the Corporate Management Sector. With each of those positions, I had the opportunity to take on new challenges, and learned many things.
Such duties on the frontlines and numerous experiences left me with significant realizations that contribute to human resource development and organizational resilience, both of which could be called core elements of management. Moreover, they also gave me an acute sense of the importance of forming an environment where each employee can manifest their individual capability and grow. For that reason, to enable midlevel managers to fulfill their role of developing their subordinates and supporting their organization, and to make it easier for younger employees to outline their career plans, we reformed our personnel system in April 2024. We designed this new system to give evaluation and promotion standards greater clarification and visibility and to maintain and improve the motivation and engagement of mid-level and young employees. Furthermore, we have strengthened recruitment activities and are working towards further utilizing Yokohama Mirai HRD and Yokohama Mirai Satellite, which are outfitted with both facilities specialized in human resource development and practical training functions. Armed with the belief that “the foundation of a company is its people,” we will continue to focus on human resource development and organizational reforms moving forward.

Having adopted the “Yokorei Business Vision 2030” and “Yokorei Sustainability Vision 2030” as its long-term direction with a view to the year 2030, the Yokorei Group aims to achieve a series of quantitative and qualitative targets vis-à-vis five material issues.
As the second stage aimed at realizing this pair of visions, during Phase II: The Power to Connect of our New Medium-Term Management Plan (October 2023 to September 2026), we have been promoting a variety of measures that have enabled us to successfully embark on the subject fiscal year (ended September 2024), the first year of that New Medium-Term Management Plan, with an increase in profit at each profit stage.
On a per-segment basis, the three priority measures under the Refrigerated Warehousing Business, namely “acceleration of development of eco-friendly logistics centers,” “realization of smart cold chain services,” and “global business expansion in ASEAN region,” have been progressing steadily, resulting in increases in both revenue and profit. 2024 saw progress in the installation of solar power generation panels at existing logistics centers as well as the completion of the construction of three new centers. Since the start of 2025, construction has wrapped up on the Ben Luc Logistics Center, our first foray into Vietnam; the Tokachi Food Valley Logistics Center, which marks our eighth logistics site in the Hokkaido area; and the Okayama CONNECT Logistics Center, a key site in Japan’s Chugoku and Shikoku regions. Furthermore, plans for a fourth site in Thailand, tentatively named the Suvarnabhumi Logistics Center, are well underway.
Moreover, we have been pursuing efforts such as the transition to robotics at each site, as exemplified by the introduction of RPA at the Ben Luc Logistics Center and Tokachi Food Valley Logistics Center, as well as the transition to smart offices in each area. By the current fiscal year (ending September 2025), we aim to have saved 40,000 hours in center work time.
Currently, we are planning aggressive capital investments through to 2026. Given the increase in needs at logistics sites, which serve as relay points, prompted by Japan’s “2024 problem” of trucker shortages, we will forge ahead with the enhancement of mainly logistics-model refrigerated warehouses and further bolster our domestic logistics networks. Overseas as well, we have promoted the development of our business in Thailand and Vietnam, and have a foundation in place for future market cultivation. Of particular note is Vietnam, where we have introduced a fully-automated warehouse at the Ben Luc Logistics Center to realize an efficient logistics system.
Among the advantages that Yokorei enjoys in its Refrigerated Warehousing Business are the latest environmentally-friendly equipment, high-quality refrigerated warehouses, and operation conducted by the capable Yokorei employees who work on the frontlines. In particular, our refrigerated warehouses have been highly recognized as durable facilities that have suffered little damage even upon past earthquakes, and as such are trusted by numerous business partner firms. We will continue to leverage our advantages in this regard as we steadily carry out our priority measures.
In our Food Sales Business, we are tackling the four priority measures of “structural reforms to enhance profitability,” “expansion of sales channels for strategic business products and commercial products from company-wide initiatives,” “development of original products and sales networks,” and “expansion of overseas sales channels.” These efforts have yielded increased profit margins and enabled us to achieve an increase in profit of over 50% year on year in the initial year of our Medium- Term Management Plan. At the same time, my honest feeling is that there is still much room for profit to grow. For the sake of that as well, we are aiming to boost Yokorei’s profitability as a whole by expanding the Food Sales Business, which has been centered on B-to-B up to this point, to include the B-to-C domain and promote the enhancement of brand power and the release of products with high value-added. Some examples include convenient foods using seafood landed at local fishing ports that make use of our buying rights and the expanded development and sales of medical foods and other products. Additionally, we seek to develop highly-specialized professional human resources and endeavor to newly develop markets in Europe and North America by utilizing the sales channels of our overseas business partners in order to establish a more competitive sales strategy.

It is my belief that “the growth of a corporation is underpinned by the growth of its people.” The true role of members of management is the realization of sustainable growth over the long term. To that end, I will do my utmost to develop Yokorei into a company that each and every of its employees can take pride in and find rewarding.
With this newfound determination, based on our corporate philosophy that “companies are social institutions and profits are a measure of their service,” we in the Yokorei Group will continue striving to achieve management that enables us to fulfill the trust and expectations of all stakeholders, be they our customers, shareholders, employees, or the community, in our capacity as an expert in food distribution that is people-, things-, and planetfriendly with our sights on commemorating 80 years since our founding and, after that, our centennial.
Please continue to support Yokorei as we move forward.