Fuji Oil - Company History

A latecomer of the post-war confusion that chose not to imitate anyone

In October 1950 Fuji Oil Co., Ltd. was established with capital of $8,333 (¥3m)[1] provided wholly by Itochu Corporation[2]. At the moment of its founding it bought the Osaka plant of Fuji Sanshi (不二蚕糸), the silk-reeling company, and with it entered the oil-milling business[3]. Behind the founding lay Itochu's strategy, as a trading house, of strengthening its handling of oil-bearing raw materials and vegetable oils; Fuji Oil set out as the operating company of Itochu's fats and oils division. The Japanese oil industry of the day was already led by millers founded before the war — Nisshin Oil Mills, Honen Oil, Nippon Oil and Fats, Honshu Seito and Yoshihara Oil Mill among them — and Fuji Oil, founded after the war, was a latecomer in the fullest sense. In September 2025 Omori Tatsuji (大森達司), the president, said that the gap in strength between the large pre-war competitors and Fuji Oil at its founding had been wide, looking back on that starting point as the last entrant.

In February 1951 Fuji Oil built a new pressing plant and began milling copra, the dried coconut meat from which coconut oil is made, succeeding with Japan's first expeller-and-solvent process — pressing combined with solvent extraction[4]. In January 1954 it began Japan's first full-scale crushing of palm kernel oil[5], and in September 1955 it completed a solvent fractionation unit for fats and oils at the Osaka plant and began producing Japan's first hard butter, sold under the name Melano Butter[6]. Three Japanese firsts in succession within five years of its founding: the latecomer had gone after a technical field of its own rather than meeting the large incumbents head on. Sakai Mikio (酒井幹夫), the former president, has described two things as the company's DNA since its founding — not imitating anyone, and insisting on plant-based materials — and it was in this period that the first of them took shape as the management judgement by which a latecomer set itself apart from the majors.

Hard butter — Melano Butter — is a cocoa butter equivalent (CBE) used in making chocolate. In the Japan of that time, imported cocoa butter was what went into Western-style confectionery and chocolate, but Fuji Oil opened a market of its own by supplying chocolate factories with hard butter refined from palm kernel oil and palm oil. In August 1955 it built the Kobe plant and began operations there[7], opening trade in chocolate fats with the confectionery makers of the Kansai region. In October 1961 its shares were listed on the second section of the Osaka Securities Exchange[8], and eleven years after its founding it held the standing of a listed company[9].

Into soy protein, and up to a full listing

In February 1963 the company began selling chocolate for fresh Western-style confectionery[10], widening its ground from supplying hard butter (CBE) to selling finished chocolate as well. In April 1967 it began producing vegetable cream[11], stepping into a vegetable-fats business aimed at whipping creams and coffee creamers. The axis of difference was "vegetable" as against the dairy creams handled by the milk companies, and the field later known as plant-based food had its prototype here. In December 1967 the company completed soy protein isolation equipment at the Osaka plant and began its soy protein business[12]. Soy protein — soy protein isolate, or SPI — is used in processed meats such as sausage and hamburger patties as a bulking and texture-improving agent, and the same technology was later extended into plant-based protein foods, or meat alternatives. With two axes — hard butter in 1955 for the fats side of "vegetable", and soy protein in 1967 for the protein side — Fuji Oil made plant-based materials a consistent line of management.

In April 1968 the company acquired roughly 192,000 square metres[13] of land for a plant in the Izumisano food industrial complex[14]; in April 1969 the first phase of the Hannan plant was completed and operations began[15]. In April 1971 the second phase was completed and operations expanded, and the move out of the Osaka plant was finished and that plant closed[16]. Shifting production from the founding-era Osaka plant — the one bought from Fuji Sanshi — to Hannan was a judgement made to secure the site area needed to expand output of industrial fats and soy protein. In February 1973 the shares were designated to the first section of the Osaka Securities Exchange[17], and in July 1974 the head office (the Osaka branch) moved to Nishi-Shinsaibashi in Chuo-ku, Osaka. In October 1978 the company listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange[18], taking seventeen years from the Osaka second section of 1961 to hold first-section standing on both the Tokyo and Osaka markets[19]. Twenty-eight years after its founding, the company that had entered as the majors' latecomer had changed its standing to that of a nationally scaled listed oil miller, on the strength of three technical fields of its own — hard butter, soy protein and vegetable cream.