Toppan Interamerica, Inc. history

The year prior to Toppan Printing's founding, 1899, Enkichi Kimura drew up a charter for the establishment of a copper letterpress and lithographic printing house.

1900: Toppan is established by technicians from Japan's Ministry of Finance.

A slump in printing and papermaking followed Toppan's first year of business at the end of the war in 1901.

In 1904, however, the onset of the Russo-Japanese War created an even greater demand for newspapers and magazines than had the Sino-Japanese war had.

In 1908, Max Schmidt, president of the Schmidt Lithograph Company in San Francisco, introduced the offset printing press to Japan.

In 1911, Gennojo Inoue, the manager of Toppan who saw the future potential of the new technology before others, drafted a detailed plan proposing the introduction of offset printing presses to Toppan executives.

Refusing to give up, Inoue assembled others in the company who understood offset printing and established a limited partnership called Offset Printing in 1913 equipped with the cutting-edge offset printing press.

Before long, a great number of people at Toppan began leaning towards a merger with Offset Printing and, in 1917, an extraordinary meeting of shareholders resolved to acquire that company.

On February 1, 1926, an extraordinary general meeting of Toppan shareholders was held where the merger agreement concluded with long-time close business partner Tokyo Shiki Co., Ltd. was approved.

In 1927 almost 20,000 new book titles and 40 million magazines were published.

In October 1945, the Ministry of Finance at that time announced the production and issuance of new Bank of Japan notes whose designs would also be done by experts at private printing houses.

1952: Toppan Containers is founded as a manufacturer of specialty cardboard and other packaging materials.

Several of Japan's large publishing houses launched successful weeklies in 1959, bringing more business to printers.

In 1960, when our technology research facility was launched, a team was assembled to research and commercialize transistor and shadow masks, and production began at the experimental plant.

In January of 1961, Toppan established its vanguard for new business development, the Toppan Printing Service Center, in Ginza, Chuo Ward, Tokyo.

1962: Toppan becomes the first Japanese printer to open a Hong Kong plant.

Subsequently, the Service Center was renamed the Toppan Idea Center (TIC) in 1964 and, the following year, the Toppan Idea Center Osaka was established.

In 1974, Japan recorded negative growth for the first time since the end of World War Ⅱ. Faced with this crisis, the private sector in Japan took initial steps toward stable growth by downsizing management and streamlining operations.

Three-layer laminated containers consisting of polyethylene and paper were used for milk and fruit juices, but Toppan improved upon these to develop the Toppan EP-PAK, a paper-based container for liquids, in 1976.

In 1979 Toppan became the first Japanese printer to build a United States production plant, a separation plant in Mountainside, New Jersey.

In 1980 the company developed a jet printer, beginning a push into computer technology.

In 1983 Toppan developed Scan Note, a computerized process for setting up pages of music for publishing.

In 1985 Toppan jointly formed Videotex Network Japan, a videotext firm.

In July 1986 the Toppan Technical Research Institute was opened in Sugito, Saitama Prefecture, as the core facility for Toppan's research activities.

In 1987 Toppan moved into the quickly growing compact-disc market, forming Denshi Media Services, a compact-and optical-disc services company, with the Netherlands-based Philips.

Toppan had previously handled the remote transmission of high-definition data for printing, but in September 1988 it created a network for the transmission of high-definition color images from the Seoul Olympics.

In 1989 Toppan developed a method for printing color photographs directly on plastic identification cards.

First launched by Toppan Media Center division at the International Garden and Greenery Exposition in Osaka in 1990, the system's high quality printouts proved enormously popular among participants in the Expo.

Toppan saw the new company, along with Toppan's offices in Düsseldorf and London, as the foundation of Toppan's presence in the European Community after the 1992 unification.

In December 1994 Toppan launched an Internet-based information provision experiment in collaboration with Keio University and involving Kyodo News, Kirin Company, Limited, Shiseido Company, Limited, and Shogakukan Inc.

Best 100 Posters from Europe & the United States wins the Mécénat International Award at the 1996 Mécénat Awards

By January 1997, Toppan bought out the remaining shares of Toppan Moore, renaming its now wholly owned subsidiary Toppan Forms Co.

Toppan launched Bitway, a new business specializing in Internet-based distribution of information, in July 1999.

The Toppan Koishikawa Building was opened in April 2000 on land redeveloped in the Koishikawa area Tokyo as a core base for advances in the field of information communication.

In May 2001 the company entered into an agreement with E Ink, a leading developer of hand-held computer display technology, to expand and develop the potential of its color filter sector.

Although the sluggish economy continued to hamper Toppan's progress and the company's profits fell 20.2 percent in 2002, Toppan still hoped that its investments in future publishing technologies would reap large dividends in the long term.

In October 2003, the Institute for Digitization of the Palace Museum Heritage (Palace Museum Digital Institute) was opened inside the Palace Museum.

Up to that point, technology developed by Toppan had been adopted by 12 countries and used for the issuance of approximately 100,000 accreditation cards (AD cards) for athletes and staff at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

In April 2005 leading United States semiconductor photomask and electronic design software developer and manufacturer DuPont Photomasks became a wholly-owned subsidiary and was integrated into the Toppan Group, the new business launching as Toppan Photomasks.

In August 2006 this system began to be used for issuing Greek IC passports and e-ID cards for the Hellenic Police.

Toppan became the first company in the Japanese printing industry to be selected as one of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World when it was announced during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2007.

Noriaki Kikuchi, an employee of Toppan Group company Toppan Communication Products' Sapporo Plant, represented Japan and won Japan's first ever gold medal in the printing category at the WorldSkills competition held in Calgary, Canada, in September 2009.