Company history

In October 2007 Maruha Group and Nichiro combined: Maruha renamed itself Maruha Nichiro Holdings and took Nichiro as a wholly owned subsidiary through a share exchange, joining the largest company in Japanese seafood with the third-largest. The combined figures for the year to March 2006 were ¥970 billion of sales but only ¥15 billion of operating profit, and the new company set a target of ¥30 billion by March 2010. The fit was complementary on paper — 75% of Maruha’s sales came from marine products, 61% of Nichiro’s from processed foods — and the plan was to regroup the two lineages into four businesses: marine, food, livestock and cold-chain logistics.

That regrouping began in April 2008, when the operating company Maruha became Maruha Nichiro Seafoods and the group was recut by business rather than by ancestry, leaving three operating companies under the holding company. But the weakness both parents shared went untouched: overseas sales were 8% at Maruha and 9% at Nichiro, against 15% at Nippon Suisan, which was also more profitable on half the revenue.

The looseness showed almost immediately. In June 2008 the agriculture ministry disclosed that a wholesaler had sold 256 tonnes of Chinese eel to a Maruha Nichiro subsidiary, Shinko Gyorui, labelled as Japanese; a ¥10 million kickback had passed to a Shinko manager, and police raided on suspicion of unfair competition. The subsidiary had begun quietly recalling shipped goods on 19 June, but President Igarashi Yuji only heard directly on the 20th, and on the 25th — the day of the annual shareholders’ meeting — told shareholders asking about the mislabelling that he did not know the findings. With more than 200 subsidiaries after the merger, he said, compliance had regrettably not reached the far end of the group.

Earnings did not follow the merger. Trading in marine products remained the main source of profit, which made forecasting so unreliable that brokerage analysts dropped coverage one after another, and extraordinary losses on unprofitable businesses were booked almost every year, as they had been in Maruha’s time. Three successive medium-term plans passed the same task down the line: convert the scale into profit. Meanwhile Nippon Suisan, half the size in revenue, had bought four overseas companies in ten years and was earning 40% of its operating profit from pharmaceuticals.

At the end of December 2013 came the crisis that defined the period. Frozen food made at the Gunma plant of group company Aqli Foods was found to contain the pesticide malathion, forcing the recall of some 6.3 million packs worth ¥1.3 billion; in January a contract worker at the plant was arrested for deliberate contamination. Concentrations were high enough that an eighth of a frozen croquette could affect a child’s health. Production stopped, and two months on, employees were still handling returns.

The background was a group in which standards varied by lineage. Aqli originated in Snow Brand’s frozen-food division, became independent after that company’s food-poisoning scandal, was renamed when the Snow Brand name became untenable, joined Nichiro in 2003 and arrived in the group with the 2007 merger. Its Gunma plant had five security cameras, all pointed at the perimeter rather than the production line, against up to 35 at a Maruha Nichiro Foods plant. Contract workers made up more than 60% of the plant’s staff, starting pay 30% below permanent employees, and the arrested man had been on six-month renewals for over eight years.

In April 2014 the operating company renamed itself Maruha Nichiro Corporation and absorbed the holding company along with the food, livestock, management and Aqli units — five companies into one, dissolving the holding structure seven years after the merger and listing on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Coming four months after the contamination, the new company was born holding a recall and an investigation. Ito Shigeru, a Maruha lifer who became president that month, said five years later that quality control had improved to what he considered a top-tier standard and that the clearing of unprofitable businesses had made forward-looking management possible.

The route back ran through frozen food and overseas. The medium-term plan of March 2018 aimed at ¥1 trillion of sales and ¥31 billion of operating profit by March 2022 — against ¥918.8 billion and ¥24.5 billion then — with ¥110 billion of investment behind it. The corporate logo was redrawn, and from that autumn the product brands inherited from the two parents were consolidated into one. Domestic frozen-food output was setting records, and the company stood alongside Nichirei at the top of it. The market re-rated the shares to an all-time high in May 2018, and the equity ratio passed 20%.

The strategic reading behind it was blunt: Japanese demand for seafood had been overtaken by meat in 2009 and kept falling, the domestic catch had shrunk to nearly a third of its peak, and imports were down about 40% as Japan was outbid abroad. Global demand, by contrast, was growing with population. So Ito’s answer was to hold fishing rights in North America and Oceania across salmon, shrimp and whitefish, process the raw material inside the group, and sell finished products worldwide — “process globally and sell globally.”

Ikemi Masaru became president in April 2020 and redefined the company’s purpose as “the world’s best seafood company,” shifting the yardstick beyond economic value alone. The portfolio was pruned and consolidated — the Alaskan salmon business sold in 2021, the two overseas units merged into one, the reporting segments regrouped. In the year to March 2023 sales reached $7.8B (¥1.02tn), passing ¥1 trillion for the first time since the merger, with operating profit of ¥29.6 billion; by the year to March 2025, sales of ¥1,078.6 billion and operating profit of ¥30.4 billion set a post-merger record and met every target of the plan.

Aquaculture is where the company’s longest bet sits. A bluefin tuna breeding team was formed back in 1987, under Maruha; the work was suspended in 1996 and resumed in 2006, when survival rates were under 0.1%. The fish spawned from that 2006 generation grew to maturity, and in 2010 the company achieved fully farmed bluefin tuna — from egg to egg — the first private company to do so. Group output reached 4,200 tonnes in the year to March 2024, close to 30% of the domestic market and the largest share. The economics remain thin: the farming division, including amberjack and yellowtail, earned ¥700 million of operating profit on ¥16 billion of sales, and full-cycle farming takes about four years to market, costing more than raising wild-caught juveniles.

In March 2026 the company changed its name to Umios — built on the word for the sea — announced with a ten-year vision placing health value and sustainability alongside the seafood core, and accompanied by a new medium-term plan, “For the ocean, for life 2027,” targeting ¥40 billion of operating profit. Restructuring continued underneath: exits from unprofitable fishing, consolidation of North American production, ¥11.5 billion of extraordinary gains from selling cross-shareholdings and property, and a progressive dividend at a payout ratio above 30%. Ikemi moved to chairman and CEO in 2025, with Yasuda Daisuke as president and COO.