The Mitsubishi Monitor talks with Mitsuo Tada, president of Mitsubishi Aluminum. You seem to keep finding new applications for aluminum. Yes, we sure do. Barely a century has passed since American and French scientists developed commercially viable methods of mass-producing aluminum. So the world is still coming to terms with the potential of this remarkable material. Manufacturers keep discovering new things to do with aluminum.    Mitsubishi Aluminum, meanwhile, has been in business since 1962. So our corporate history spans more than one-third of the history of commercial production of aluminum.    Today, we are upgrading our ability to respond quickly and effectively to changing market needs and circumstances. That includes fostering a sense of urgency among employees. Our success depends entirely on the commitment and capabilities of our people. Helping them make the most of their potential is our job in management. At your company, a lot of the "new things to do with aluminum" are in automobiles. Exactly. Strong and light components of aluminum help automakers reduce the weight of vehicles. Weight savings are crucial to improving fuel economy, which is a pressing issue for automakers everywhere. So automakers are switching from steel and iron to aluminum and other lightweight materials wherever possible.    Another advantage of aluminum that is driving demand in automobiles is the metal's ease of recycling. Adopting aluminum components helps automakers achieve their increasingly higher goals for recyclability.  The president exhibits a pair of beverage cans made from aluminum supplied by his company. Isn't recycling a big emphasis at your company in other ways, too? Aluminum cans are a good example. Our parent company, Mitsubishi Materials, is an industry leader in producing aluminum cans and in promoting can recycling. We supply the aluminum raw material that Mitsubishi Materials uses in cans. Together, our companies have succeeded in recycling more than 83% of the aluminum cans produced at Mitsubishi Materials, and that percentage continues to rise.    Converting aluminum scrap into ingots consumes only 3% as much electricity as producing aluminum anew from bauxite ore does. So this is another way that we contribute to conserving energy and to curtailing output of carbon dioxide. To be sure, collecting cans is a huge logistical undertaking. We and Mitsubishi Materials have set up a company to collect cans efficiently and recycle them into aluminum ingots.    I should note that recycling is part of a larger environmental commitment at Mitsubishi Aluminum. That commitment is reshaping our work in product development. For example, we have developed processing technology that eliminates the need for using chromium in a lot of aluminum components. Chromium can have deleterious effects on the ecosystem, and manufacturers are working to reduce their consumption of that metal. Aluminum made with our new technology is as corrosion-resistant and durable as chrome-coated aluminum is. Where do you make your products?  "Our flagship plant, at the foot of Mt. Fuji, is an excellent, highly productive operation. It gives us a platform for responding promptly to changing demand in different product categories." We produce extruded aluminum components for automotive heat exchangers at a U.S. plant in Alabama and at a Thai plant, as well as in Japan. We are studying the possibility of setting up a plant in China.    Our flagship plant, at the foot of Mt. Fuji, is an excellent, highly productive operation. It gives us a platform for responding promptly to changing demand in different product categories. A Japanese subsidiary makes aluminum facing material for consumer electronic goods and cameras. Another subsidiary in Japan makes aluminum foil and other kinds of packaging products. What does being part of the Mitsubishi community mean for your company? Several Mitsubishi companies took part in establishing Mitsubishi Aluminum back in 1962. So we were a collective Mitsubishi initiative. Mitsubishi Materials has since acquired a large majority of our equity. But we retain a strong sense of collective affiliation with the Mitsubishi companies. And several Mitsubishi companies are important customers for some of our products.    In management, our Mitsubishi affiliation means devoting careful attention to shared ethical guidelines. Koyata Iwasaki, the fourth and last president of the old Mitsubishi organization, articulated those guidelines in the 1930s. He called for (1) working to enrich society--both materially and spiritually--and to safeguard the global environment, (2) conducting business in the spirit of integrity and fairness and (3) adopting a global perspective in developing business. Those are good principles, and we take them seriously.