Sumitomo Corporation (Head Office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Kuniharu Nakamura) announced that the Ambatovy Nickel Project ("Ambatovy"), which has an integrated production system encompassing all stages from mining to refinery in collaboration with Sherritt International Corporation (Head Office: Ontario, Canada; President and CEO:Mr.David Pathe), Korea Resources Corporation (Head Office: Seol, Korea; President and CEO:Dr. Koh Jung-Sik) and SNC Lavalin Inc. (Head Office: Quebec, Canada; President and CEO:Mr.Robert G. Card) in Madagascar, achieved Commercial Production, which is defined as 70% of ore throughput of nameplate capacity in the Pressure Acid Leach(PAL) circuit on average over a thirty-day period. Ambatovy has been improving production ramp-up steadily and will continue to improve operations to achieve nameplate capacity (60,000 tpa finished nickel and 5,600 tpa finished cobalt, 100% basis).
Sumitomo Corporation is a diversified group organized around 7 areas of activity:
- retail distribution of consumer goods (24.4% of net sales): food products, apparel and accessories, pharmaceuticals, building materials, household and decorative items, etc. The group is also developing a real estate business;
- trading of hydrocarbon, mining, chemicals and electronics products (24%): oil, natural gas, copper, gold, silver, zinc, lead, nickel, coal, iron ore, resins, pesticides, petrochemical products, etc.;
- trading of steel products and non ferrous metals (20%): flat and long steel products, tubular products, aluminum products, titanium, etc.;
- distribution of transportation and construction systems and equipments (15.1%): spatial equipments, landing fields, forest machines, motorcycles, mining operating vehicles, etc.;
- telecommunications and multimedia products and services supplies (8.8%): TV wiring, data communication solutions, film distribution services, mobile telephony, Internet access and computing services;
- development and implementation of civil engineering infrastructures (7.6%): power plants, wastewater treatment units, industrial plants, telecommunications centers, etc. The group is also providing logistics services;
- other (0.1%).
SUMITOMO CORPORATION 
By 
