One of the Kansai Region’s Premier Locations – Why Himeji City Is Chosen as a Business Hub

Each city boasts excellent transportation infrastructure for easy access to international destinations and efficient transit.

Transportation access is one of the important factors that support corporate activity. Himeji City has an excellent location in the Kansai area for wide-area travel. In particular, Himeji Station, where the Sanyo Shinkansen stops, plays a major role as a gateway for business and tourism.

By rail, if you use the new rapid service, it takes 35 minutes to Kobe and 1 hour to Osaka. If you take the Sanyo Shinkansen, it is 15 minutes to Shin-Kobe, 30 minutes to Shin-Osaka, and 3 hours to Tokyo, and it is very convenient to get to Tokyo, not to mention the major cities in the Kansai area.

By air, you can easily reach major cities in East Asia by using Kobe Airport. From Himeji to Kobe Airport, it is about an hour by train or car, so you can use it for everyday business trips and traffic with overseas traffic.

In terms of logistics, the wide-area road network, including the Sanyo Expressway, serves as a key point connecting the Kansai, Chugoku and Shikoku areas. In addition, freight rail transportation based at Himeji Freight Station and efficient transportation by combining land and sea is possible by using the port functions of Himeji Port. Enhancement of transportation infrastructure is a big advantage of Himeji City.

Stable environment and good location for BCP

The city of Himeji is located in the center of the Harima Plain facing the Seto Inland Sea and is a warm and relatively low-precipitation area. We are blessed with a climate that is easy to spend, where you can feel the change of four seasons. Less fear of freezing even in winter and lower natural disaster risks such as typhoons, snowfall and tsunamis are also key points from the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) perspective. Being able to reduce risks such as shutdown and planned delays due to natural disasters is a major source of security for companies with manufacturing and logistics bases. In addition, Himeji City is focusing on the development of the urban base that supports BCP. The large-scale maintenance business around Himeji Station and the maintenance of the wide-area transportation network are examples.

Under these circumstances, research facilities such as the large-scale synchrotron radiation facility "SPring-8", which can generate the world's highest performance synchrotron radiation, and the X-ray free electron laser facility SACLA (Sakura) have been brought together around Himeji City. It contributes to the research and development of universities and companies.

Himeji City, which has excellent transportation infrastructure and a stable natural environment, can be said to have a good foundation to develop business in the long term.

Potential and dominance as a "Harima area"

The strength of Himeji City is not limited to the city alone, and by constituting the Harima area, which is linked with the surrounding municipalities, it has great potential.

The Harima area is one of Japan's leading industrial integrated areas, and the size of the economy is large enough to be equivalent to one prefecture. Himeji will have a population of 500,000 compared with 1.2 million in the Harima area, with a workforce population of more than 650,000. With educational institutions such as universities and vocational schools scattered within the region, the ability to adopt young people stably is a major strength.

In addition, since the manufacturing industry is a thriving area, we can expect to be able to secure a large number of workforce in technical and technical positions. The environment in which companies can meet a variety of human resources needs is also a great strength.

In addition, the living environment with a balance of urban functions and natural environment also contributes to the improvement of employee retention. If you look from recruitment to establishment, Himeji City is a very suitable location for long-term business operations.