Mitsui Matsushima Holdings - Company History

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Financial history 1957–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1913
Origin 三井財閥
Founding location 長崎県西彼杵郡松島
Core business at founding Coal mining on Matsushima, Nagasaki Prefecture
Listed 1961
President Yoshioka Yasushi President since 2020 (age 57, as of 2026)
Current priority M&A · Shareholder returns Serial acquisition of succession-issue companies in niche markets
Founding
In January 1913 Mitsui Mining bought mining right no. 326 in Nagasaki Prefecture from Koga Mining, and Matsushima Coal Mining was established in Tokiwa-machi, Nagasaki, with capital of ¥2m put up by the Koga family, Mitsui & Co. and Mitsui Mining. It was an affiliate set up to secure coal for shipment through the port of Nagasaki, which Miike alone could not supply, and in December 1923 the head office moved to the village of Matsushima. The Matsushima pit itself stopped producing in 1935 after conditions underground deteriorated and it flooded several times, and the mainstay moved to Oshima and then to the undersea colliery at Ikeshima. The company listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1961, and its name changed to Matsushima Kosan in 1973, to Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo in 1983, and to Mitsui Matsushima Holdings in October 2018.
The Decision
Before leaving the business it was founded on, the company had already finished buying businesses that had nothing to do with it. In April 1973, under the government fifth coal policy, it transferred its coal production division to Ikeshima Coal Mine and the parent became a diversified company in trading, building materials and property. Even after Ikeshima closed in November 2001 it held on to its interest in Liddell in Australia, but in the meantime it was acquiring companies with no connection to coal: Clean Surface Technology in mask blanks in February 2017, the shredder maker Meiko Shokai in April 2019, and, in April 2020, the pet-food maker KMT and Sansei Electronics in crystal-device measurement. By March 2024, when the exhaustion of the Liddell mine ended 111 years in coal, the sources of earnings had already been replaced. What paid for that run of acquisitions was the operating profit of $254.1M (¥36bn) booked in the 2022 financial year on soaring coal prices.
Today
Coal revenue has gone to zero, and the profit is shared among the three fields the company bought. Revenue for the year to March 2026 was $413.5M (¥65bn) and operating profit $60.1M (¥10bn). Industrial products accounted for $209.9M (¥33bn) of sales and $31.6M (¥5bn) of profit, consumer products for $171.3M (¥27bn) and $15.2M (¥2bn), and finance and other for $32.2M (¥5bn) and $12.6M (¥2bn) — not one of the three segments overlaps with mining or with shipping coal. The widest margin is in finance and other, where the property-backed lending of M.R.F., acquired in July 2024, leaves a 40 per cent return. Operating profit fell by seven-tenths to $50.8M (¥8bn) in the 2024 financial year, when coal ended, and the three acquired fields alone took two years to bring it back to $60.1M (¥10bn).
Competition
Miners that closed their pits moved to whatever stood near the plant they already had. Furukawa Co. shut the Ashio copper mine and made machinery its mainstay, and DOWA switched the feed for its smelters from ore to recycled material. What Mitsui Matsushima chose was shredders, pet food, photomask substrates, overhead-line fittings for power transmission and property-backed lending — none of it connected by technology to mining or hauling coal. The test applied was not the industry but three things: stable earnings, a niche market, and a business that is easy to understand. In the 2024 financial year four companies from the former Murakami fund held 37.56 per cent of the register, and Mitsui Matsushima answered with a progressive dividend policy and a buyback of $133.6M (¥20bn), about 31 per cent of the shares in issue. Choosing targets by the stability of their earnings rather than by technology moved the company from being judged as a coal producer to being judged on how it allocates capital.

Timeline

1913–1972Matsushima Coal Mining, and the undersea seams off Nagasaki

  1. 1781Coal first worked on Matsushima island by Man'emon of Togitsu village
  2. 1913Matsushima Coal Mining founded on rights bought from Koga Mining, ¥2m capital
  3. 1917Capital raised to ¥5m; output holds near 500,000 tonnes a year to 1928
  4. 1923Head office moved to Matsushima village, alongside the pits
  5. 1935Matsushima pits stopped after 22 years; development of Oshima begins
  6. 1936Cutting starts at Oshima
  7. 1947Zaibatsu dissolution: Mitsui's shares sold to directors and employees
  8. 1952Development of the Ikeshima concession begins; capital raised to ¥50m
  9. 1959Ikeshima starts commercial production
  10. 1960Matsushima Kaiun (松島海運) established for shipping
  11. 1961Listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  12. 1962Promoted to the first section; listed in Fukuoka
  13. 1969Record combined output of 1.81 million tonnes; rehabilitation designation
  14. 1970Oshima colliery closes after thirty-five years

1973–2017The Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo years: policy, Australia, and the end of Ikeshima

  1. 1973Ikeshima Coal Mining incorporated with ¥300m capital; production transferred to it
  2. 1973Parent renamed Matsushima Kosan; the subsidiary takes the name Matsushima Coal Mining
  3. 1979Matsushima Overseas Coal Development set up for Australian coal
  4. 1983Mitsui Mining Building Materials Sales absorbed; renamed Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo
  5. 1990MITSUI MATSUSHIMA AUSTRALIA PTY. LTD. established
  6. 1991Entry into the Liddell coal mine joint venture in New South Wales
  7. 1997Mitsui Matsushima Resources established
  8. 1999Consolidated subsidiary Matsushima Kaiun absorbed
  9. 2001The Ikeshima colliery closes; about 1,200 jobs cut
  10. 2002MITSUI MATSUSHIMA INTERNATIONAL PTY. LTD. established in Australia
  11. 2003Delisted from the first section of the Osaka Securities Exchange
  12. 2007Ikeshima Urban Mine established on the old colliery site
  13. 2009New shares issued; capital raised to ¥8,571m
  14. 2011Matsushima Coal Mining dissolved
  15. 2015Hanabishi Housei acquired, taking the group into apparel
  16. 2017Clean Surface Technology acquired — mask blanks for panels and components

2018–2025Mitsui Matsushima Holdings: serial acquisitions, and the end of 110 years of coal

  1. 2018Renamed Mitsui Matsushima Holdings; coal sales split into a new subsidiary
  2. 2019Meiko Shokai, the shredder maker, acquired
  3. 2020K.M.T. and Sansei Electronics acquired on the same month
  4. 2020Yoshioka Yasushi, from investment banking, becomes president
  5. 2021Systec Kyowa and THAI SYSTECH KYOWA CO., LTD. made subsidiaries
  6. 2022Moved to the Prime Market; Nippon Katan acquired in May
  7. 2023Record profit on the coal-price surge; four acquisitions in the year
  8. 2024Saunders & Associates acquired through Sansei America
  9. 2024Liddell mined out: coal production and sales end after 111 years
  10. 2024Former Murakami-fund companies take 37.56 per cent of the register
  11. 2024M.R.F. acquired, taking the group into financial services
  12. 2025Reporting moves to three segments: consumer, industrial, finance and other

Founding Story

1913–1972Matsushima Coal Mining, and the undersea seams off Nagasaki

Mitsui Matsushima began as a satellite of Mitsui Mining, set up in 1913 to secure coal that could be shipped out through the port of Nagasaki. Over the next sixty years the company worked its way across the islands of the Nishisonogi archipelago — from the Matsushima pits to Oshima and then to Ikeshima — reached a record 1.81 million tonnes in 1969, and listed on all three of Japan's main exchanges. Sales grew from $8.8M (¥3bn) in the year to March 1957 to $17.4M (¥5bn) fifteen years later, but by then the energy revolution had already taken the ground out from under domestic coal.

Buying the mining rights from Koga Mining, and the founding of Matsushima Coal Mining

The coal of Matsushima, an island lying off the Nishisonogi peninsula in Nagasaki prefecture, was first worked — as far as the written record goes — in 1781, when Man'emon (萬右衛門), a resident of Togitsu village, began digging there[1]; by 1856 a mining operation of considerable size was running on the island[2]. The work lapsed around the time of the Meiji Restoration, after which the family of Koga Zenbei (古賀善兵衛), colliery operators at Kitagata in Saga prefecture, took over the mining rights and had raised annual output to roughly 360,000 tonnes by 1912[3]. Mitsui Mining, which needed shipping coal routed through Nagasaki on top of what it drew from Miike, bought a half share in registered mining right no. 326 of Nagasaki prefecture from Koga Mining in January 1913[4], and with capital put up by the Koga family, Mitsui & Co., Mitsui Mining and associated parties incorporated Matsushima Coal Mining Co.[5] with capital of ¥2 million[6]. Its head office was placed at Tokiwacho in the city of Nagasaki[7], and the company was launched as a satellite of Mitsui Mining.

At incorporation the 40,000 shares were split 24,000 to the Mitsui side (Mitsui Mining and Mitsui & Co.) and 16,000 to the Koga side[8]. A capital increase in August 1917 allotted 1.5 new shares for every share held, raising the total to 100,000 shares and capital to ¥5 million[9]. When Mitsui Mining and Mitsui & Co. converted their individually registered holdings into corporate names in 1920, the shareholder count fell to sixteen and Mitsui's control of the register was settled. The head office moved to Matsushima village, where the operations were, in December 1923[10]. At the Matsushima no. 1 to no. 3 pits inherited from Koga Mining the company electrified its cutting equipment and mechanised the workings with compressed air, and for the twelve years from 1917 to 1928 output held at around 500,000 tonnes a year[11].

Oshima and Ikeshima, and the postwar priority production system

Conditions underground at the Matsushima pits deteriorated as the workings advanced, and after several floodings[12] the company decided in February 1935 to stop production there, ending twenty-two years of operation[13]. It shifted its weight to the Oshima concession in the same Nishisonogi island group, buying out Mitsui Mining's stake in Oshima Coal Mining Co.[14] — a company established in June 1917 — and beginning full development in May 1935[15], with cutting starting in May 1936[16]. Production stabilised around 1940, which coincided with the tightening wartime demands for more coal. The registered head office moved again: to Nihonbashi Muromachi in Tokyo in July 1936, then, after the war, to Ganrincho in Fukuoka in June 1947 and to Daimyocho in the same city in May 1948[17].

After the Second World War the shares in Matsushima Coal Mining held by Mitsui Honsha and Mitsui Mining were sold off by the Holding Company Liquidation Commission to the company's own directors and employees[18] under the dissolution of the zaibatsu — the family-controlled industrial combines — and the firm restarted as an independent company outside the Mitsui group. Supplies of materials and labour were disrupted for a time, but the company was covered by the government's priority production system, which put coal and steel output ahead of everything else, and with new plant installed its output reached about 530,000 tonnes in 1956, above the prewar peak[19]. Development of the Ikeshima concession began in March 1952 and commercial operation started in February 1959[20]; by 1969 Ikeshima was producing more than Oshima, and the two operations together reached an all-time high of 1.81 million tonnes that year[21]. Ikeshima lies offshore of Sotome town in Nishisonogi district (now part of the city of Nagasaki) — an undersea colliery[22] whose workings ran out beneath the seabed, a concession that would only pay back over the long term.

Listing, the closure of Oshima, and the energy revolution

On the back of the improved results the company listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1961[23], moved up to the first section in February 1962, listed on the Fukuoka Stock Exchange in April of that year[24] and on the first section of the Osaka Securities Exchange in September 1963[25]. Few colliery companies with a coal division carried their shares on all three of the main exchanges, and the listings gave Matsushima both standing and a base from which to fund capital investment. From the sinking of the Ikeshima shaft in 1952[26] onwards, the centre of gravity of that investment shifted from modernising and expanding the Oshima district to developing the Ikeshima concession. In March 1968 the company established Matsushima Kensetsu Kogyo (松島建設工業)[27], a general civil-engineering and building contractor and today a consolidated subsidiary, to capture the construction demand around the collieries and to frame a related-business arm.

From the late 1960s, however, the shift of primary energy to oil — the energy revolution — advanced, and domestic coal lost ground to imported coal and oil on both price and pollution[28]. In September 1969 the company was designated under the coal-industry rehabilitation and reorganisation scheme, as the industry as a whole moved towards a managed contraction. The Oshima operation, where mining conditions had also worsened, closed in June 1970[29], ending thirty-five years of the business that had carried the company's output through the war and the recovery. The government's third and fourth coal policies required separate accounting for coal and non-coal divisions and a reordering of corporate structures[30], and the survival formula common across the industry became the same: hive the mining side off into a separate company and secure the parent's profit from trading, building materials and property.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. 松島炭鉱五十年史 (Fifty Years of Matsushima Coal Mining, 1962)↩
  2. 松島炭鉱五十年史 (Fifty Years of Matsushima Coal Mining, 1962)↩
  3. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  4. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, annual securities report for the 169th term (year to March 2025), corporate-history section↩
  5. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  6. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, annual securities report for the 169th term (year to March 2025), corporate-history section↩
  7. 松島炭鉱五十年史 (Fifty Years of Matsushima Coal Mining, 1962)↩
  8. 松島炭鉱五十年史 (Fifty Years of Matsushima Coal Mining, 1962)↩
  9. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  10. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  11. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  12. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  13. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  14. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  15. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, annual securities report for the 169th term (year to March 2025), corporate-history section↩
  16. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  17. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  18. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  19. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  20. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  21. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  22. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  23. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, annual securities report for the 169th term (year to March 2025), corporate-history section↩
  24. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings, annual securities report for the 169th term (year to March 2025), corporate-history section↩
  25. Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo, annual securities report for the 150th term (year to March 2006), corporate-history section↩
  26. 会社銀行八十年史 (Eighty Years of Companies and Banks, Toyo Keizai Shinposha, 1955), the Matsushima Coal Mining entry↩
  27. Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo, annual securities report for the 150th term (year to March 2006), corporate-history section↩
  28. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  29. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩
  30. 日本会社史総覧 (A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories, 1995)↩

References & sources

  1. Mitsui Matsushima Holdings Co., Ltd. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, the segment and shareholder disclosures, and company announcements on acquisitions and disposals.
  2. Fifty Years of Matsushima Coal Mining (1962) — the founding, the Matsushima and Oshima pits, and the opening of Ikeshima.
  3. A Conspectus of Japanese Company Histories (1995) — the Mitsui Matsushima Sangyo entry.

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