This year's T. Hasegawa Leaders & Newsmakers feature is jointly answered by T. Hasegawa Co. Ltd. president and COO, Takao Umino, alongside T. Hasegawa USA, Inc., chief executive officer, Tom Damiano.
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This year's T. Hasegawa Leaders & Newsmakers feature is jointly answered by T. Hasegawa Co. Ltd. president and COO, Takao Umino, alongside T. Hasegawa USA, Inc., chief executive officer, Tom Damiano.
T. Hasegawa
Tokyo, Japan
2024 Sales: ¥ 71,645M
Can you share three company highlights for the last 12 months?
T. Hasegawa’s global business has continued to thrive over the past 12 months, supported by strategic investments, technical expansion, innovative flavor
Takao Umino, president, chief operating officer, T. Hasegawa Co. Ltd.Courtesy of T. Hasegawa
For the fiscal year ending September 2024, we achieved record-breaking consolidated sales, with revenue and substantial profit growth across all regions. We delivered these strong results despite macroeconomic headwinds, including concerns over global supply chain disruptions, raw material inflation and a slowing global economy. We successfully adapted by expanding flavor and fragrance sales, securing profitability in Japan and accelerating growth in North America and Asia. Our performance marked the fourth consecutive year of record global consolidated sales, driven in part by growth in non-consolidated and U.S. operations. Sales from subsidiaries outside Japan increased from 46.5% to 48.5% year-over-year, supported by yen depreciation and continued strength in China.
This year also brought significant leadership change at our headquarters in Japan with the appointment of a new Representative Director, President in October. This transition supports our evolving organizational culture and aligns with our global expansion and steady performance. While our core growth strategies remain unchanged, the new leadership positions us well for long-term success.
We remain focused on efficiently managing resources and expanding our global footprint, particularly in the U.S., China and Southeast Asia. In the U.S., T. Hasegawa continues to grow both organically and through acquisition. In September 2024, we acquired Abelei Flavors, Inc., a Midwest-based U.S. manufacturer founded in 1981 that specializes in high-quality flavors across applications including food, beverage, confectionery, dairy, health, and nutrition. This acquisition expands our geographic reach and enhances our flavor portfolio and technical capabilities in North America.
We also completed a full renovation of our R&D flavor innovation center in Cerritos, California. This year-long project expanded our dedicated R&D space by more than 50%, added new chemist labs and introduced state-of-the-art equipment and pilot scale capabilities to support advanced flavor development in the U.S. This builds on our 2022 opening of a 60,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Rancho Cucamonga, California, which significantly expanded our sweet flavor production capacity with liquid and powder flavor blending, and the planned addition of spray dry, and extraction flavor technology. This facility supports strong top-line growth since launch and remains a key part of our long-term vision for expanded U.S. production.
Our talented team remains the heart of T. Hasegawa. Our synergy with T. Hasegawa’s R&D center in Japan enhances research by enabling the exchange of technical knowledge and aligning innovation with global trends. Beyond R&D, our sales, production, and customer service teams play a vital role in maintaining close customer partnerships and driving practical flavor solutions. One of our greatest strengths is collaboration — our employees are passionate about solving challenges, communicating openly, and building lasting value with our customers.
What are the major influencers for innovation in 2024 leading into 2025?
In October 2024, we introduced a new global corporate message: to be “a company that generates value and excitement to enrich lives, utilizing a broad range of
Tom Damiano, chief executive officer, T. Hasegawa USA, Inc.Courtesy of T Hasegawa
For example, in response to a sharp increase in cocoa prices — driven by global shortages and droughts in West Africa — T. Hasegawa USA developed Cocoa Powder Replacer flavors that can lessen the dependence on the volatility of traditional cocoa powders. This innovation enables food and beverage manufacturers to reduce raw material usage without compromising taste.
We also introduced Orange Juice Replacer flavors in North America — natural flavors that replicate and boost orange juice flavor notes while reducing the need for traditional from-concentrate and not-from-concentrate orange juice in formulations. These flavor innovations were developed in response to citrus greening (HLB), a bacterial disease that has significantly impacted citrus supply by producing bitter, juice-incompatible fruit. Available in both powdered and liquid forms, T. Hasegawa’s Orange Juice Replacer flavors support a wide range of beverage and sweet good applications.
Both T. Hasegawa’s Cocoa Powder Replacer flavors and Orange Juice Replacer flavors represent “no-compromise” solutions that help brands maintain taste consistency while navigating agricultural supply challenges and price pressures.
Our “Bridge to Tokyo” program continues to be a cornerstone of innovation. In this initiative, our R&D team in Japan creates novel technologies and flavor profiles, which are then refined by T. Hasegawa USA for Western markets. This collaboration has led to several advanced flavor technologies:
- BOOSTRACT® – a kokumi-enhancing flavor modifier that increases richness and mouthfeel while balancing flavor complexity.
- EmulsiTRACT™ – a proprietary fat mimetic that mimics the texture of dairy milk by combining edible oils with flavor-enhancing components. This clean-label technology also helps reduce reliance on palm oil.
- HASEAROMA™ – a sensory-based research and enhancement platform that isolates and amplifies flavor molecules to recreate authentic sweet and savory profiles, replicating the “first-bite” or “first-sip” experience.
- ChefAroma™ – a culinary flavor-base system designed for foodservice and industrial applications. Using real ingredients and reaction flavor technology, ChefAroma adds layered, chef-inspired taste to products like soups, broths, condiments, and ready meals—reducing prep time while delivering restaurant-quality flavor.
- PLANTREACT™ - A targeted reaction technology designed to mimic the complex flavor profiles of animal proteins for vegan based products. By targeting the unique molecules of these proteins, the flavors are both authentic and satisfying.
- HASECITRUS™ - A citrus fruit flavor technology that ensures high stability in both ready-to-drink and powder beverage formulations, while preventing off-notes from oxidation.
These innovations provide relevant solutions to today’s formulation challenges and continue to drive consumer satisfaction across categories.
What are your main company focuses and/or goals for the next 12 months?
Our company’s goal is always to provide lasting value to our customers by solving their food and beverage manufacturing challenges with best-in-class flavor solutions that delight the senses and “make life taste better.” We approach this goal by strengthening our global operations, expanding our compounded flavor and fragrance products and investing in our capabilities, R&D and production to introduce innovative new flavor and modulation technologies.
Throughout our business operations in Japan, we are working to expand our market share and address product categories that are expected to grow in the future. The key to expanding our market share in Japan is the “Business Solutions Division”, which oversees sales, R&D, and marketing. We are enhancing our proposal capabilities by leveraging inter-departmental collaboration. In areas where growth is expected, we are focusing on proposals for health and medical foods amid a backdrop of a declining birthrate and aging population, as well as addressing masking needs for household odors. Overall, we aim to contribute to a richer lifestyle through a wide range of technologies beyond just flavors and fragrances. Within the Japanese market, we also plan to strengthen our production capabilities by investing approximately 6 billion yen in our Fukaya plant (Fukaya City, Saitama Prefecture) by the end of the fiscal year ending September 2026, addressing aging infrastructure and promoting labor-saving measures.
Regarding our global business, the proportion of overseas sales has been increasing annually, despite rising uncertainties in the global economy. In addition to our expanded footprint in the U.S., we are actively investing in facilities in China, and Malaysia. In China, we plan to construct a new plant in Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, to meet the growing demand for beverage flavors, with operations expected to commence after December 2026. In Malaysia, to accommodate local demand expansion, we are planning to build a new plant in the Enstek Industrial Park, aiming for operations to start in December 2026.
Over the next year, we want to sharpen our competitive edge by becoming the fastest and most efficient flavor manufacturer in the market — bringing innovative new products to market quicker, accelerating our operational timelines and providing flavor solutions to our customers more quickly than ever before. Accomplishing this requires a culture of innovation and agility within our teams. We encourage creative problem-solving and cross-functional collaboration to keep our processes lean and our products cutting-edge. This agility helps us respond swiftly to market changes and customer needs, while improvements in our operational efficiency and delivery metrics help ensure that products reach our customers on time and in full – exceeding their expectations and earning their loyalty to T. Hasegawa.
