Nichirei’s New Businesses: Challenges beyond Current Fields (238KB/2 pages

Nichirei's New Businesses: Challenges beyond Current Fields

To create new value in food and health, which is one of its material matters, the Nichirei Group will step up development of original new healthy and sustainable ingredients, products and services that are

worthy of the Nichirei brand, as well as initiatives for nutrition. We select priority themes for our initiatives from three perspectives: helping to resolve health issues; new food resources and ingredients that are sustainable and eco-friendly; and taking on the challenge of new business models.

Out of a total of five themes, three are being carried out by Nichirei Corporation and two are being conducted in collaboration with operating companies. We will focus our resources on the visualization of consumers' mental processes using our unique psychological statistics, research to discover new value in freezing, and initiatives to create our own nutritional targets.

New Business Models for Health and Sustainable Foods

In Japan, the consumption of rice, which is the bedrock of the country's food culture, has fallen by half over the past 50 years. Current health fads have led people to avoid carbohydrates, with a tendency to go to extremes in limiting intake. There is also the recent health issue of new types of malnutrition caused by unbalanced diets. Moreover, given the time and trouble required to cook rice, consumption looks likely to continue falling. Nichirei wanted to create an opportunity for Japan to rediscover its rice-based food culture by offering simple and functional new staple foods made from rice, while

eliminating concerns about carbohydrate intake. Gohan- no-Mirai is a new staple food made from rice flour and rice-derived dietary fiber using our original restructuring technology. It contains a full day's recommended allowance of fiber with about half the carbohydrates, and nutrients such as iron and calcium can be added according to the health condition of the person eating it. Because it uses ingredients derived from rice, it reproduces rice's familiar texture and flavor. Furthermore it can be prepared by simply adding hot water, making it a stress- free healthy staple food that can be eaten regularly. We also offer personalized health support by providing nutritionally balanced recipes and consultation services with a registered dietitian. We will use customer data obtained through direct sales and communication on our Gohan-no-Mirai website to improve our products and services, ensuring that our services consistently match needs.

Seek out new sales models/R&D of new ideas for health

A Data Service Business Based on Food Preference Analysis:

Providing new foods is an important subject for Nichirei, which has an obligation to maintain a stable and sustainable supply to meet potential future food shortages.

Insects have a low environmental impact and excellent nutritional value and production efficiency. As such, they are expected to be a sustainable food resource and have therefore been attracting attention as a new food ingredient over the past several years.

TAKEO Inc., a trailblazer in Japan's edible insect market, has developed a diverse range of products and services for meals in which insects can be enjoyed as

ingredients like vegetables, fish or meat. By investing in TAKEO and combining its know-how with our processing technologies, we will broaden the potential of edible insects to create a new culinary domain.

As a new challenge, Nichirei aims to develop products and provide services that are eco-friendly, good for people, and help make edible insects a more familiar ingredient in meals.

Platform

Due to factors including changes in work styles, advances made by women in the workplace and the development of a super-aging society, the need to reduce meal preparation time at home is growing among Japanese consumers. Likewise, needs are rising for meals that take health factors into account, such as nutritional balance and food allergies. Many consumers are finding it difficult to plan daily menus because of these issues. To help resolve them, in August 2021 Nichirei entered the AI-based menu proposal service business by acquiring all the shares of me:new, a startup that operates an automatic menu generator app of the same name, and created a new business by integrating me:new's services with the conomeal kitchen app and services Nichirei developed in-house. The me:new app creates up to a week's worth of menus. Mainly geared toward families with young children, it suggests recipes

that parents and children can eat together, as well as allergy-friendly recipes. Needs for such services are rising in the BtoB as well as the BtoC market. Going forward, we will work to provide new value in the form of a data service business based on our research into food preferences and deliciousness.

Visualization of Mental Processes

Psychological statistics is the science of quantifying mental processes to visualize them in numerical data and models. It is possible to intuitively identify a consumer's train of thought through quantification and visualization using sophisticated statistical methods such as carefully designed questionnaire surveys, multivariate analysis and structural equation modeling to provide numerical substantiation. Through its joint research with the University, Nichirei is applying and deploying unique psychological statistics techniques in its surveys of employee satisfaction, corporate image and other topics. Going forward, we intend to also use these techniques for original consumer marketing.

Freezing Research

Nichirei is conducting ongoing research on antifreeze proteins (AFPs) for a wide range of practical applications.

AFPs bind to ice crystals, inhibiting their growth. Other effects of AFPs include inhibiting recrystallization, promoting uniform dispersion of solutes and protecting cells in low-temperature environments above the freezing point. Applications are expected in a wide range of fields from food to medicine, cosmetics, reagents and industry. Nichirei will combine the results of this research with its freezing technologies to create new products and services. Initiatives for Nutrition

We will step up our initiatives for nutrition to help resolve the health problem of the double threat of concurrent overnutrition and undernutrition. Initiatives will include participation in the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's Strategic Initiative for a Healthy and Sustainable Food Environment with the aim of being able to set targets that ensure intake in recommended amounts while avoiding excessive intake of substances of concern.

Data