On October 28, 2002, Yoshinari Niimura, President of Takasago International Corporation, joined a small team of Takasago executives and engineers on a visit to Aceites Esenciales Y Derivados, S. A. (ACEDESA), the Takasago-owned producer of aromatic chemicals, to attend a ceremony commemorating the completion of a new hydrogenation plant and wastewater treatment facility.

After a cutting-of-the-tape ceremony and tour of the new facility and plant, President Niimura expressed great enthusiasm about ACEDESA's new capability to manufacture of fine chemicals using Takasago's asymmetric hydrogenation technologies. The asymmetric hydrogenation reaction is a Nobel-Prize-Winning technology used for the manufacture of aromatic chemicals and pharmaceutical intermediates. The adoption of this revolutionary technique in Spain will benefit both ACEDESA and its parent Takasago in Japan.

Three weeks earlier on November 7, ACEDESA's newly inaugurated wastewater treatment plant discharged "clean effluent" into the city sewer system for the first time in two years. The newly completed facility has dramatically improved the quality of the waste products discharged from the ACEDESA complex.