FOR every 2000 A4-size pages that its thousands of printers produce, Fujifilm Business Innovation, through its corporate social responsibility arm, plants a tree. It is also set to launch in a year’s time a regional hub that will remanufacture multifunction printers that will have a reuse rate of 84 percent. The transport system involved in the process is designed to help reduce carbon emission rates by 53 percent. Executives from the Japanese firm disclosed these sustainability plans in a media briefing on July 8.
The Philippines, one of the many countries where Fujifilm has an office, will play a key role in both projects. First, it held its first tree-planting activity consisting of 1,000 seeds on July 5 in Siniloan, Laguna. Held in partnership with the local nongovernmental organization Fostering Education and Environment for Development Inc., this program intends to plant 1,000 trees at least every six months.
More importantly, the company’s Circular Manufacturing Center (CMC) will also start operations in Laguna in August 2026. About 5,000 multifunction printers produced by Fujifilm will be collected yearly from around and beyond Southeast Asia, including countries like Australia, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam, and delivered to the Philippines.
All the printers will be disassembled down to their component levels and cleaned. After a thorough and careful inspection, parts will be identified for reuse, cleaned again and repaired before being returned to the assembly line. Each remanufactured multifunction printer will undergo the same rigorous inspection process done to its newly built counterparts. As such, it will be regarded as a new product with its own unique history, number of prints, reset and new manufacturing date, product name, product code and assigned serial number. The executives present in the media briefing maintained that the remanufactured printers will meet “the same quality and reliability standards” of the newly built multifunction ones.
(From left) Fujifilm Philippines President Hideaki Kato; Fujifilm Executive Advisor Mutsuki Tomono; and Fujifilm Optics Philippines President Hiroyuki Temmei. PHOTO BY THE AUTHOR
The CMC’s establishment will “promote resource circulation in the Asia-Pacific region,” said Mutsuki Tomono, Fujifilm’s executive advisor overseeing ESG and corporate sustainability. It will also lead to the “reduction of natural resource input and carbon emissions” while accelerating the “strengthening of the global production system.”
Construction work began on the CMC in July and launch is expected to happen in August 2026. The center is situated in Calamba City, Laguna, and will employ about 50 workers, adding to the company’s current 2,400 personnel. According to Tomono, the Philippines was selected because of its skilled and English-fluent workforce, availability of group assets like infrastructure, strong government support and strategic location.
As Tomono explained, after August 2026, all the machines remanufactured in the Laguna-based CMC will be sent back to each individual country where they were first collected. Currently, all the used machines that are gathered are sent to Japan, where they are repaired and remanufactured, and then again returned to the various nations where they were collected. The Fujifilm presentation maintained that this Philippine location and the resultant new transportation will improve efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.
Philippine personnel hired for the Circular Manufacturing Center will be trained in Japan. PHOTO FROM FUJIFILM
Apparently, there is room for growth. The 5,000 multifunction printers that the Philippines will import from the region annually can still increase, as Japan produces 20,000 of these machines a year.
Tomono reaffirmed his company’s commitment to “the realization of a more sustainable society,” actively expanding their efforts “to reduce environmental impact by coordinating initiatives in each region.”
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