Message from the President
Yamatane celebrated its 100th anniversary in July 2024. Ever since our founder, Taneji Yamazaki, opened his rice brokerage business, we’ve taken on challenge after challenge, growing into a corporate group that now operates in logistics, food, information, and real estate.
The Yamatane Group has enormous potential, backed by the network of trust we’ve built over our 100-year history. We’ll continue working to increase our corporate value by tackling various social challenges, going beyond our core business areas of food and logistics.
For the next 100 years, we’ll continue to uphold our founder’s cherished corporate philosophy, “Trust Above All.” Together with all our stakeholders, we aim to generate the power to contribute to society and become a corporate group that society trusts.
Yamatane Corporation
Representative Director and President
Iwao Kawaharada
Bringing together diverse human resources to create the power to contribute to society
The Yamatane Group shares value with all employees as we work to create a sustainable society. Our purpose (our reason for existing) is “Bringing together diverse human resources to create the power to contribute to society.” We want to contribute to a prosperous society through our business activities. To make this purpose a reality, we’ll give our employees the courage to take bold action, create a workplace where everyone can tackle social challenges with excitement, and strive to become indispensable to society.
Building on Our Network of Trust to Drive Innovation
The Yamatane Group, which creates business synergies for continued growth, has a network of trust built over 100 years under our corporate philosophy, “Trust Above All.” In our logistics business, we’ve maintained long-term relationships with major corporate clients, while in our food business, we’ve earned deep trust from production regions. Using this network of trust as our foundation and returning to our founding spirit, we’ll take on new challenges to solve social issues. We won’t be constrained by our existing business portfolio. We’ll venture into new business areas based on society’s needs and advance open innovation with other companies, fostering a corporate culture full of entrepreneurial spirit and pursuing transformation without fearing failure.
Creating Business Synergies for Continued Growth
Our new Medium-Term Management Plan, the Yamatane 2028 Plan, which launched in April 2025, works to achieve our Long-Term Vision Yamatane 2031 Vision goal: taking on the challenge of creating a more prosperous society through logistics and food distribution. We’re implementing a company system for business-specific profit management and working to further improve profitability by creating synergies between businesses.
We introduced the company system to speed up business operations by developing management talent and enabling quick decision-making by delegating authority. To create synergies between businesses, each company will take the lead on new business development while we promote collaboration between businesses from a company-wide medium- to long-term strategic perspective, including open innovation with other companies.
During the three-year period of the Yamatane 2028 Plan, we’ll focus on maximizing synergies between logistics and food. We aim to improve competitiveness by building optimal supply chains in the food business, while also constructing and providing logistics platforms for food centered on agricultural products.
Making Agriculture Sustainable
As a partner connecting farms to tables, we’re also working to make agriculture sustainable. To revitalize production regions and improve their profitability, we’re introducing new technologies to increase rice production efficiency, promoting environmentally conscious farming, and supporting young people entering agriculture. We’ll also help secure diverse revenue sources, including the use of byproducts and creating environmental credits.
Sharing Value with All Employees
To mark our 100th anniversary, we introduced a restricted stock compensation system for group employees, making all Yamatane Group employees shareholders. By creating a system where better performance directly benefits employees, we’ve aligned shareholder and employee interests while boosting employee motivation. We expect this expansion of human capital will foster a sense of ownership in management and encourage people to think longer-term when making decisions. Our diverse talent will join hands, share value, and work as one to meet all our stakeholders’ expectations.
Supporting your sustainability.
The Yamatane Group has grown by supporting our stakeholders’ sustainability. All of our businesses are essential to daily life. Even in this rapidly changing VUCA era, we’re starting various challenges for the next 100 years so we can keep supporting the sustainability of society and its people. In October 2024, we established the values that Yamatane Group executives and employees hold dear. They are:
Enjoy the Challenge, Believe in Teamwork, and Create a Chain of Gratitude.
We hope our stakeholders will continue to lend us their support and understanding as we make our purpose a reality by living these values, all built on our corporate philosophy, “Trust Above All.”
Our Second Founding Era
We’re now entering what we see as our Second Founding Era. As we take this new step forward, we’ll honor our founding spirit while each employee takes on challenges and innovations to create new value. We shall continue giving our all to meet your expectations.
Biography
Joined Sumitomo Bank (now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation) in April 1986, serving as Corporate Banking Division General Manager in various locations. Appointed Senior Managing Executive Officer of the bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group in 2019. Joined Yamatane in May 2022 as Executive Vice President in charge of Corporate Planning.
Has held current position since June 2024.
