JAPAN’S biggest printing company is funding a startup that makes paper out of rock, in a bid to diversify into new materials and as environmental concerns push companies to seek more sustainable products.

    Toppan Printing Co., the nation’s largest by sales, will form an alliance with TBM Co. that could see posters, catalogs and stickers manufactured out of limestone, a plentiful material in otherwise resources-scarce Japan. Their ambition is to create a business with revenue of 50 billion yen (US$444 million) by the end of the decade, according to a release from the two Tokyo-based firms Friday.

    Toppan will pay a royalty of up to 1.5 billion yen for access to TBM’s Limex technology and the partners will discuss license fees on future products.

    TBM, established in 2011 by 43 year-old entrepreneur Nobuyoshi Yamasaki, will benefit from tapping its partner’s personnel and facilities including paper printing and processing technology, corporate officer Taichi Yamaguchi said.

    For Toppan, which traces its origins to the turn of the last century, it’s an opportunity to get a toe-hold in upstream material-making as it seeks to diversify from a business suffering from the digital revolution and dwindling demand for newspapers, magazines and books, according to Yoshiteru Itotani, senior general manager of Toppan’s business innovation promotion division.

    “We will be innovating if we are able to manufacture upstream materials,” Itotani. “We empathize with their vision and president Yamasaki thinks of going global with this Japanese technology, while we are not very good at globalization.”

    Itotani declined to comment on the possibility of Toppan taking equity in the smaller firm, but TBM’s Yamaguchi said his company wouldn’t rule it out. Toppan had sales of 1.5 trillion yen in the year ended March 31, while TBM has yet to create much revenue as commercial operations have just started.

    Limex can substitute for paper and plastic. TBM says that by swapping stone for trees, the water equivalent to the annual needs of 220 million people could be saved if just 5 percent of the world’s paper were manufactured using the new material.

    The process of turning stone into paper originated in Taiwan, TBM said. Yamasaki began importing the material to Japan in 2008. Having developed its own technology, TBM began commercial sales of Limex business cards in April and over 600 firms have bought the product. (SD-Agencies)