Mitsui Kinzoku decided on 10 November 2026 to build a new copper-foil plant in Malaysia. The company puts the total investment at about ¥190bn, to be paid for with its own funds and borrowings, and says operation will begin in stages from April 2031.
What the money buys
The plant will make MicroThin, a carrier-attached ultra-thin copper foil, and VSP, an electrolytic copper foil for high-frequency circuit boards. The ¥190bn covers land (about ¥14bn), buildings (about ¥32bn) and production equipment and other items (about ¥144bn). The first-half results presentation ties VSP to AI servers and lists higher sales volumes of both products among the drivers of the half-year profit rise.
The capacity schedule
The presentation shows what the plant is meant to add. MicroThin capacity rises from 8,000 thousand square metres a month in the fiscal year 2030 to 10,000 in 2031 (a 2,000 addition from Malaysia), stays there in 2032, then reaches 12,000 in 2033 on another 2,000. VSP goes from 1,400 tonnes a month to 2,000 (+600) in 2031 and 2,600 (+600) in 2032.
| Fiscal year | MicroThin | VSP |
|---|---|---|
| 2030 | 8,000 | 1,400 |
| 2031 | 10,000 (+2,000) | 2,000 (+600) |
| 2032 | 10,000 (no addition) | 2,600 (+600) |
| 2033 | 12,000 (+2,000) | 2,600 (no addition) |
Mitsui Kinzoku says it is also weighing a combined 5,000 tonnes a month of VSP capacity across all sites if the market keeps expanding. That is a possibility, not a decision.
The company links continued expansion of its main copper-foil products (MicroThin, VSP and FaradFlex) to an assumption that copper-foil operating profit will be 3.2 times the 2025 level in fiscal 2030 and 5.5 times in fiscal 2033. The multiplier applies to profit across the three products and all sites, not to the Malaysian plant alone, and the presentation gives no plant-specific return.
How the balance sheet and payout fit
First-half operating profit rose 44.7% to ¥57.5bn on sales of ¥431.1bn, and net profit more than doubled to ¥39.5bn. The full-year operating profit forecast was raised to ¥99bn from ¥94bn, while the net profit forecast was trimmed to ¥78bn from ¥80bn after a ¥6.4bn special loss from the retirement-benefit plan revision. The presentation puts second-half operating profit at ¥41.5bn, below the first half.
The board also raised its dividend-on-equity target to 4.0% from 3.5%, applying from the year ending March 2027. The year-end dividend forecast rises to ¥18 a share from ¥14 after the ten-for-one split effective 1 October 2026. On a pre-split basis the full-year forecast is ¥320, against an earlier ¥280 and ¥245 for the year to March 2026.
The presentation does not name the Malaysian site or give a construction timetable before the April 2031 start, and it states no expected return on the ¥190bn. The split between cash and borrowings is also not stated.