The annual meeting of Nanophoton shareholders was held on June 22, 2023. We got out of the university campus to the Asahi Hankyu Building in Senri-Chuo this year. This is the 20th general meeting of the commemorative Nanophoton Corporation. We plan to hold a party in the fall to celebrate our 20th anniversary.

Twenty years have passed in a blink of an eye for us since our founding, and even after 20 years, Nanophoton is still the only Raman microscope manufacturer in the world. 20 years ago, the iPhone and iPad were still a shadow of their former selves, and in Japan, feature phones, flat-screen TVs, and PC98 were in full swing. The cityscape was different from today, and there were no such things as high-rise condo. In the analytical instrument industry, Raman microscopes, in which a laser beam scans a sample at high speed, did not exist, although microscopic Raman devices, which are microscopes connected to a Raman spectrometer, were sold. And that situation has not changed. With the exception of Nanophoton.

However, after 20 years, the market is clearly expanding, although other companies are not catching up in terms of technology. Therefore, Nanophoton is about to move onto a new stage for the next 20 years. At this year’s general shareholders’ meeting, in addition to reporting on Nanophoton’s current status, I also talked about the next stage. We are now trying to reform our own challenges created by the inertia of the past 20 years. It is not a modification or an addition, but a discontinuous disruption.

Three years of Japanese slavish regulation of the COVID-19 has given us enough frustration and thinking time to make drastic structural changes. We have already drastically revamped our employment system since its inception, moved our headquarters from Osaka City to Minoh City, started Email magazine, and stabilized our manufacturing and sales by thoroughly outsourcing. We were also able to obtain a matching grant from the Small and Medium Enterprise Agency, which enabled us to begin developing groundbreaking products.

With Ukraine, Nanophoton is starting to fight back. We ask for your continued support.

23 June, 2023
Nanophoton Corporation
Chairman and Representative, Satoshi Kawata