About us
Beyond Materials is a specialized consulting and engineering service provider for the materials industry. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, we are supporting Japanese material suppliers on their path of global and sustainable growth by providing customer-oriented advisory services in market intelligence, strategy & product development, and implementation support as well as digital scalable solutions.
Our team includes experienced management consultants specializing on application technologies and product portfolio strategies – e.g., in the field of mobility, and functional material experts with broad experience on chemical products incl. chemicals such as plastics, adhesives, films and fibers, as well as metals, carbons, ceramics and composites.
Our Unique Selling Proposition:
We not only tell you about the “What” and “Why”. We go “beyond” and help you with the “How” – how to adapt and use a material according to future product design requirements based on our market intelligence and how to formulate and execute a go-to-market strategy to participate in future market growth.

Our purpose

Beyond Materials empowers the materials industry to leverage its unique skill set beyond its typical value chain position in a global and circular ecosystem. Our vision is to become the first choice as advisor and partner for strategic and engineering consultancy for Japanese industrial material suppliers.
When navigating our customers towards sustainable growth we are not limited to advisory services around the material itself and the typical value chain – we go beyond. We break with old structures and processes.
Individual silo thinking and acting of material suppliers was yesterday. We think and act beyond the conventional material supplier-customer relationship and grow and enhance our customer’s product portfolios and organizations by offering them a set of holistic and scalable solutions including global market intelligence, consulting, implementation capabilities, and digital technology. With the help of a unique set of capabilities, resources, and network, Beyond Materials integrates and connects the material suppliers in the circular ecosystem and allows for a sustainable future.
Who is behind Beyond Materials
Beyond Materials was established by Mitsubishi Corporation and FEV Consulting GmbH – two companies with a strong set of complementary capabilities, industry know-how and network.
- Mitsubishi Corporation (MC) is a globally integrated business enterprise originating from the trading business, now developing and operating businesses together with its offices and subsidiaries in approximately 90 countries and regions worldwide, as well as a global network of around 1,700 group companies. MC has broad network and business experience in material industry.
- FEV Consulting combines top management consulting expertise with the technical capabilities and know-how of the FEV Group. In-depth industry knowledge enables the development of pragmatic solutions to the most pressing and complex issues facing today’s enterprises.

What makes Beyond Materials unique

Why materials matter
The world of materials is developing rapidly. The requirements on future product designs and underlying materials are becoming more challenging and complex. Driven by mega trends such as circular economy, sustainability, digitalization, electrification and connected and automated vehicles, innovative and functional materials play a crucial part in modern products. Materials are not only a simple structural design solution anymore and a means to make a product cheaper or lighter. Moreover, they need to demonstrate additional functionalities e.g. thermal and electric conductivity, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, morphing and translucent surfaces. At the same time, legislation and society require a low CO2 footprint across its lifecycle and the ability to be easily recycled.
A target-oriented product development is necessary for both, the efficient use of human and financial resources as well as to maximize the sales potential of new products. However, this requires a deep understanding of the market environment, its drivers for change and key stakeholders. For material suppliers, it can be difficult to capture long-term trends in their target markets, as daily business is mostly determined by short-term customer requests. However, this is necessary to remain competitive through innovations and customer-oriented development activities and products.
We are offering frequently updated reports and customer specific studies tailormade for our customers’ most pressing questions. For that we continuously screen relevant market and growth drivers as well as new innovations in the fields of materials and high-tech applications. As a result, we empower our customers to make validated decisions within their organizations based on up-to-date market intelligence.
The world is changing faster than ever. Global mega trends such as digitization and sustainability are transforming whole industries in which established manufacturers and suppliers are now competing with each other and against new tech players for market shares. In addition, recent events have shown that the industrial globalization has made global supply chains more vulnerable to disruption. Consequently, corporate strategies must comply to these new boundary conditions and even proven strategies must be reviewed.
We help our customers in making the right decisions by developing a sound and unique strategy for their organization. This can range from a holistic corporate strategy to developing a dedicated product portfolio strategy and complementing market entry strategies. As we deeply understand both domains, materials and applications, we can well explain the “What”, the “Why” and also the “How”.
Having deep material know-how and being capable of developing superior material compositions based on individual customer requirements is only a first step. However, when approaching new customers, it is necessary to showcase that the offered material improves the customer’s target application performance. Whether it brings weight reduction, increases energy efficiency or durability, customers often want proof of how their products are benefitting from your material.
Together with our material and engineering experts, we support our customers not only in optimizing their materials for customer applications, but also in developing hardware demonstrators. This Proof of Concept (PoC) helps our customers to showcase the superiority of their material to their clients and ensures trust in the brand entailing growing and recurring business. In fact, we can even go further and support along the entire product development process: from ideation to prototyping and preparation for large-scale industrialization.
In the past, we have seen numerous material suppliers with strong and innovative products. At the same time, OEMs and suppliers from various industries are longing for new materials with enhanced functionality and performance improvements. However, often times material suppliers and end customers do not come together, simply because there are many intermediaries in the value chain or there are regional or cultural gaps due to different countries.
We are building the bridge between our customers and their clients! Whether it is about creating a sales and marketing concept or bringing our customers and potential customers together, we are the partner of choice!
A lot of R&D effort is made to newly develop superior material formulations. However, often this does not follow a structured process, as transparency about the necessary investments, required resources and targeted revenues and profits is insufficient.
We support in defining and implementing a tailormade R&D and Product Management System that helps our customers track progress and success of research and development activities and products. Defining processes and roles, identifying the right KPIs and designing a monitoring dashboard, or installing and running a Project Management Office – we can help from end to end.
A target-oriented product development is necessary for both, the efficient use of human and financial resources as well as to maximize the sales potential of new products. However, this requires a deep understanding of the market environment, its drivers for change and key stakeholders. For material suppliers, it can be difficult to capture long-term trends in their target markets, as daily business is mostly determined by short-term customer requests. However, this is necessary to remain competitive through innovations and customer-oriented development activities and products.
We are offering frequently updated reports and customer specific studies tailormade for our customers’ most pressing questions. For that we continuously screen relevant market and growth drivers as well as new innovations in the fields of materials and high-tech applications. As a result, we empower our customers to make validated decisions within their organizations based on up-to-date market intelligence.
The world is changing faster than ever. Global mega trends such as digitization and sustainability are transforming whole industries in which established manufacturers and suppliers are now competing with each other and against new tech players for market shares. In addition, recent events have shown that the industrial globalization has made global supply chains more vulnerable to disruption. Consequently, corporate strategies must comply to these new boundary conditions and even proven strategies must be reviewed.
We help our customers in making the right decisions by developing a sound and unique strategy for their organization. This can range from a holistic corporate strategy to developing a dedicated product portfolio strategy and complementing market entry strategies. As we deeply understand both domains, materials and applications, we can well explain the “What”, the “Why” and also the “How”.
Having deep material know-how and being capable of developing superior material compositions based on individual customer requirements is only a first step. However, when approaching new customers, it is necessary to showcase that the offered material improves the customer’s target application performance. Whether it brings weight reduction, increases energy efficiency or durability, customers often want proof of how their products are benefitting from your material.
Together with our material and engineering experts, we support our customers not only in optimizing their materials for customer applications, but also in developing hardware demonstrators. This Proof of Concept (PoC) helps our customers to showcase the superiority of their material to their clients and ensures trust in the brand entailing growing and recurring business. In fact, we can even go further and support along the entire product development process: from ideation to prototyping and preparation for large-scale industrialization.
In the past, we have seen numerous material suppliers with strong and innovative products. At the same time, OEMs and suppliers from various industries are longing for new materials with enhanced functionality and performance improvements. However, often times material suppliers and end customers do not come together, simply because there are many intermediaries in the value chain or there are regional or cultural gaps due to different countries.
We are building the bridge between our customers and their clients! Whether it is about creating a sales and marketing concept or bringing our customers and potential customers together, we are the partner of choice!
A lot of R&D effort is made to newly develop superior material formulations. However, often this does not follow a structured process, as transparency about the necessary investments, required resources and targeted revenues and profits is insufficient.
We support in defining and implementing a tailormade R&D and Product Management System that helps our customers track progress and success of research and development activities and products. Defining processes and roles, identifying the right KPIs and designing a monitoring dashboard, or installing and running a Project Management Office – we can help from end to end.
Contact us

Tetsushi Abe
Executive President

Johannes Houben
Executive Vice-President
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