NEWS

Sumitomo Heavy Industries Acquires Daikin Cryogenics Business

October 01, 2003

Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd., Tokyo, Japan announced that the company has reached an agreement with Daikin Industries, Ltd., Osaka, Japan to purchase its cryogenics business. The transition of all the business activities will be completed by the end of March, 2004. SHI will start manufacturing, and begin coverage for sales and service of current Daikin products as SHI products April 1, 2004.

Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. has invested in its cryogenics business and it has become one of the company's most rapidly growing businesses. Daikin had built its own cryogenics business based on its strong compressor technology together with the company's unique engineering, such as large capacity 4K (Kelvin) GM-JT refrigerators, developed under technical partnership with APD Cryogenics, currently SHI-APD Cryogenics Inc., a subsidiary of Sumitomo Heavy Industries since February 2002.

By adding Daikin's unique technologies and manufacturing know-how, SHI will strengthen its technology foundation and R&D strength for new product developments in areas such as Industrial Process and Energy fields adding to already commercialized medical applications in MRI, NMR in bio-chemistries and cryopumps serving the semiconductor industry. In addition to the listed served markets, cryogenic technology has huge possibilities in a wide range of scientific and engineering applications due to its unique characteristics of superconducting material cooling, and improving sensitivity of X-ray or IR detectors etc.

Sumitomo Heavy Industries plans to grow its cryogenics business, including the acquisition of Daikin, to $ 100 million in consolidated sales combined with its overseas subsidiaries by 2004.

The basic agreement of the transition period is: Sumitomo Heavy Industries Ltd will acquire manufacturing, and sales and service rights of Daikin cryogenics products and all associated intellectual property. Daikin will retain its facilities and employees. After completion of the transaction, the current line of Daikin products and service parts will be manufactured by SHI. In Japan Nagase Electronic Service Co., Ltd., Yokohama, Japan will continue sales and service of the products as an SHI representative.