CEO Message
A New Stage of Transformation and Growth: From Nutrition to Well-Being
Katsunari Matsuda
CEO
President and Representative Director
Meiji Holdings Co., Ltd.
Real Transformation Takes Responsibility, Commitment
I became CEO in June 2025, at a time that placed significant pressure on how we operate our business. Market conditions have changed rapidly in recent years, and I have come to believe we need to rethink our business model on a fundamental level.
Fiscal 2026 is a pivotal year. It closes out our 2026 Medium-Term Business Plan and our 2026 Vision. Hitting the operating profit target we set for this year will be a challenge, but we are taking it seriously, and accelerating the structural reforms that prepare us for our next phase of growth.
That work has already begun. We are examining each of our businesses for its profitability and its long-term growth potential. Where we see room to grow, we are putting more of our resources to work. Where a business no longer fits our philosophy or our strategy, we are prepared to scale it back or step away from it.
Management, Built for the Long Term
We are shaping a new long-term vision now, with our sights on 2035.
The Meiji Group began with a spirit that lives on today: "contribute to the country through nutrition." A century later, what we mean by "nutrition" has grown far beyond food. It reaches into health, and past health into the well-being of every person we serve. We want to stand by people through every stage of their lives and support their health for as long as they live.
Our business also depends on what nature gives us. Raw milk, cocoa, and other gifts of the natural world make our products possible. A company that builds its value on those gifts owes something in return. So our purpose reaches beyond even human health to the health of this planet: the people on it, the animals and plants, the forests and oceans, and the society and earth that hold us all.
Sustainability holds this together. By pairing the resources nature provides with technologies only the Meiji Group has developed, we can create value for society on a far larger scale. This thinking will run through our next vision and carry our growth forward.
Creating new value by maximizing the synergies between food and pharmaceuticals, and Transforming Our Culture
The Meiji Group’s greatest strength is the way we bring food and pharmaceuticals together. That combination lets us connect two things that rarely meet: building health through what people eat and drink, and treating illness through prescription drugs and medical devices.
We are advancing new business initiatives that draw on both fields, including foods built to increase the value of our pharmaceuticals. Ideas like these come from thinking in innovative ways, and they reflect the kind of value only the Meiji Group can offer society. We will keep taking on inventive challenges as the next era takes shape.
None of this happens without our people. Transformation runs on the energy of individuals who choose to act, so we look for people who take initiative and we give them real chances to use it. For new ventures, we hand significant authority to the employees with the drive to use it, and we are building a culture that rewards bold attempts and treats setbacks as part of how people learn.
When people of different backgrounds and talents do their best work and grow while they do it, the whole company grows stronger for it.
The Value Only Meiji Group Can Bring
For 110 years, since 1916, the Meiji Group has worked to support people's health and to bring something new to the world while doing it. We will keep at that work. With the technology we have built over the years and the strengths that belong to the Meiji Group alone, we will create businesses and products that do not yet exist anywhere. That is the company we want to be: one that creates markets and value the world has never seen, and never stops giving back to the society it serves.
The Meiji Group is committed to that future, and together we will work toward it with a strong sense of determination.
June 2026