Minebea Obtains National Laboratory Certification

Minebea Co., Ltd. (Minebea) has been working toward responding to the RoHS restrictions, an EU Directive, on a Group-wide basis. Ahead of official implementation of these restrictions effective July 1, 2006, Minebea has confirmed plans to achieve complete elimination of the six restricted chemical substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium from all its products and models, excluding those for special applications, such as aerospace components, etc., by the end of March 2006. To surely maintain this system in the future and ensure that the restricted hazardous substances are not included in the materials used in its products, Minebea were preparing to obtain Thailand's and China's national laboratory accreditation certification, based upon international analysis standard ISO/IEC 17025 at its Thai and Chinese plants, its first and second large mass production plants, respectively. Recently, Minebea's R&D Center in Thailand has obtained certification of the standard. Minebea's Chinese plant (Shanghai plant) will soon obtain this certification as well. The test records issued by authorized laboratories are treated as being effective in international business transactions, based on the Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA). Minebea has installed XRF spectroscopes in its plants, which are using materials, etc. that may include restricted hazardous substances. The Company has also established a process screening all lots during the receiving inspection of materials. In case the plants have found any restricted hazardous substances whose values are above the defined values in this process, they will make a precision analysis of the substances at the above laboratories, judging whether or not the content of the substances exceeds the restricted limits. Acutely aware of the significant burden placed on the environment by the activities of industrial concerns, Minebea has always approached environmental protection as a key management objective. Thanks to efforts aimed at phasing out the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as cleaning agents, in April 1993 the Company became the first bearing manufacturer in the world to completely eliminate specified CFCs from all production process. Minebea will continue to actively promote environmental preservation activity in the future, based on the same policy.