Sumitomo Corporation newly opened its Imabari Sub-Branch Office under the firm's Chugoku Office in December 2006 to enhance sales activities targeting major shipyards and ship owners in the Seto Inland Sea area, as well as to build closer business relationships with such clients. Since then, the Imabari Sub-Branch Office has made a good start, successfully signing over 30 ship contracts, mainly on new shipbuilding, and on secondhand ships. Imabari is one of Sumitomo Corporation's focus regions: in October 2008, Susumu Kato, President and CEO of the firm visited a client shipyard to view an enormous building dock.

The recent trend in the ship trade is a shift away from the conventional type of business deals focusing on steel products for shipbuilding and on ship sales, towards a more diverse business. With its backbone in traditional ship business, Sumitomo Corporation increasingly pursues multifaceted deals that involve business relationships in various dimensions by harnessing the unique local characteristics of the Seto Inland Sea area as well as the firm's strength as a trading house. The firm received orders for several aircraft lease deals in July 2008, and it continues to leverage its advantage as a leading trading firm to increase business that requires cross-divisional cooperation. Going forward, the firm will further enhance the ongoing ship business, the core activity area of the Imabari Sub-Branch Office, and exert efforts to create new, community-oriented businesses.