ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo;
Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter "ITOCHU")
announced today that an Inauguration Ceremony was held on
September 22, 2012 with a participation of the concerned
parties, in the State of Oregon, the United States, after
the completion of the Caithness Shepherds Flat Wind Project
to which ITOCHU is participating via its subsidiary Tyr
Energy, together with Caithness Energy, GE Energy Financial
Services, Google Inc. and Sumitomo Corporation of America.
This is the second project realized jointly with GE under a
"Memorandum on business collaboration concerning
co-investment in renewable energy worldwide" concluded with
GE in May 2010.
The Project will generate 845 megawatts of energy to supply
235,000 average US homes, and will achieve a reduction of
1.48 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to
the annual amount of carbon dioxide from approximately
260,000 passenger vehicles. Also the Project will have an
annual economic impact of US $37 million for the State of
Oregon.
ITOCHU positions power generation as one of the key areas
of investment for the company and has been proactively
expanding related businesses throughout the world. ITOCHU
is set to aggressively pursue investment opportunities in
the power generation area, including power generating
assets utilizing renewable energy.
Itochu Corporation is a diversified group organized around 8 areas of activity:
- distribution of food products (34.9% of net sales): frozen food, vegetable oil, sweeteners, sugars, etc.;
- distribution of hydrocarbons (23.3%): hydrocarbons (natural gas, oil products, bioethanol, etc.). The group also develops manufacturing of chemical products activity;
- manufacturing and sale of industrial and construction machines, vehicles and ships (9.7%);
- production of metals and coal (8.5%);
- sale of consumer products (8.4%). The group also develops forest products sale and real estate development activities;
- distribution of computing and telecommunication equipments (7%): data transmission, Internet access, media content broadcasting and mobile telephony equipments. The group also offers financial services;
- sale of textile products (3.6%);
- other (4.6%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: Japan (79.5%), Singapore (5.4%), the United States (4.5%), Australia (3.1%), China (2.8%) and other (4.7%).