On the Publication of the Winter Issue ofValqua Technology News

I would like to thank all of you for following Valqua Technology News, and I offer you my best
wishes for 2022.
Last year, the global COVID-19 pandemic continued unabated, causing significant impacts on globalindustry. But amid all this, the pandemic resulted in progress in the construction of a service
infrastructure using IT technology and in the development of communication tools, and new businessand project processes have become standardized as well. Meanwhile, the business environment
around us reflects a growing interest in sustainability, and I am aware that there are a variety oftechnical discussions around the achievement of carbon neutrality. Also, with networks creatingconnections between all conceivable things, the management of the information obtained throughthese networks has become an important business issue. The supply and demand of semiconductors
and related components also came to be discussed from the BCP perspective, a new phenomenon thisyear.

We have accumulated technologies in the fields of seal engineering and material design through ourmany years of technical activities. Our CX activities in technology development in the future will bebased on these technologies, and we will use the open innovation described above to evolve further.
Specifically, we intend to use techniques such as materials informatics to create materials with newfunctions and fuse them with digital information to lead to the construction of new services. One
example of this, as mentioned in our previous issue, is developing technology for predictive
maintenance using the IoT. Development has already reached the stage where the technology isready to be introduced to the public, and we hope you look forward to seeing these solutions put touse in actual production sites in the near future.
Under such circumstance, this issue of Technology News will cover application technologies for sealengineering — which was the starting point for Valqua’s technology — and sensing technology using
new materials as well as methods to consider the appropriate direction for future technology
development from the IP perspective. I hope you all find these articles helpful, and I appreciate yourcontinued support of our products and services and for Valqua Technology News.
Director, Managing Executive Officer CTO & CQO

Mutsuo Aoki
2Winter 2022

Amid such a business environment, for the last year we have been promoting a variety of initiatives
under the concept of Corporate Transformation（CX）in order to achieve the major goals we have set
for the 100th anniversary of our founding in 2027. In the area of technology development, we will
focus more closely on the open innovation activities that we have already begun in order tosuccessfully evolve into an H&S company. In an era where technology is developing at an extremely
fast pace, it is essential that we implement agile, high-quality technology development so that we cancontinuously deliver new technology solutions to customers. That’s why Valqua believes that it isessential to consider collaboration with research institutions, academia, and companies that possess
excellent technologies, both in Japan and overseas, with no restrictions on the format. This is also thefoundation for the system of collaboration with technology venture companies that we have alreadyannounced.

No.42