Toyo Suisan (Maruchan) — Company History

A marine-products trading house founded at Tsukiji as Yokosuka Suisan

In March 1953 Mori Kazuo (森和夫) incorporated Yokosuka Suisan Co., Ltd. inside the Tsukiji fish market in Chuo ward, Tokyo, and began exporting frozen tuna and dealing in domestic marine products. The “Yokosuka” in the name came from Mori’s birthplace, the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa prefecture; the firm was founded as a marine-products trading house with an eye on the food demand of Japan’s post-war reconstruction. Its first business ran on two tracks at once — the export trade in frozen tuna, and wholesaling domestic marine products into the market — and it started life as a dealer in fish at a time when the country was short of food and fish meant animal protein. In December 1955 the company acquired a cold store in Kawasaki, Kanagawa prefecture, and entered the refrigeration business. That store was the origin of what would later become the cold-storage segment, and the first step towards bringing the storage and logistics of marine products in-house.

In June 1956 Toyo Suisan began producing fish ham and sausage. Fish sausage was then spreading through Japan as a cheap source of animal protein, and the move marked the start of a diversification that looked beyond selling fresh fish towards processed foods. The company changed its trade name to Toyo Suisan Kaisha, Ltd. in 1956 (the year of the change in the official record), and in August 1957 moved its head office to its present site at Konan in Minato ward, Tokyo. Four years after its founding it had assembled the three pillars it would keep — marine-products trader, processed-food manufacturer, and cold-storage operator.

Entering instant noodles and establishing the Maruchan brand (1961–1972)

In July 1960 Toyo Suisan merged with Tokyo Suisan Kogyo Co., Ltd. and acquired that company’s Yaizu plant. The firm was expanding, and the merger widened both its processing base and the reach of its marine-products supply network. Then, in April 1961, Toyo Suisan began producing instant noodles. It was entering three years after Nissin Foods had launched Chicken Ramen in 1958 — a late arrival in the instant-noodle market. But in May 1962 Toyo Suisan began using the Maruchan mark, giving its noodle brand an identity of its own. Maruchan is said to derive from the childhood nickname of Mori Kazuo’s eldest daughter, Yoshiko (佳子), and it took hold as a warm, familiar, family-sounding name.

Through the 1960s the company built production sites for instant noodles and processed foods across the country: a new Saitama plant in February 1964, a new Sagami plant in March 1965, the acquisition in June 1966 of Marukyo Shokuhin Kogyo Co., Ltd. of Tamitomi, Yamanashi prefecture (now Kofu Toyo Co., Ltd., a consolidated subsidiary), a new Fukuoka plant in April 1967, and the establishment in July 1969 of Hachinohe Toyo Co., Ltd. in Hachinohe, Aomori prefecture. On the strength of flagship products such as Akai Kitsune (赤いきつね, “red fox” udon in a cup) and Midori no Tanuki (緑のたぬき, “green raccoon-dog” soba — both the forerunners of the mainstay range launched from 1978) and later Maruchan Seimen (マルちゃん正麺, its premium non-fried ramen), the Maruchan brand took second place in the Japanese instant-noodle category behind Nissin Foods. In September 1970 Toyo Suisan listed its shares on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, adding the second sections of the Osaka and Nagoya exchanges in September 1972 and moving up to the first sections of all three in August 1973 — the scale of a listed company reached twenty years after founding.

Maruchan, Inc. and a commanding position in the North American and Mexican noodle markets

Toyo Suisan’s overseas expansion began in earnest in May 1987, with the establishment of Pacmar, Inc. (now a consolidated subsidiary) in the state of Washington. Pacmar was set up as a packaging subsidiary, but in later years it became the sales base of the North American instant-noodle business. In April 1989 Toyo Suisan established Maruchan Virginia, Inc. (now a consolidated subsidiary) in the state of Virginia, moving directly into the North American instant-noodle market. Nissin Foods was struggling in the United States at that point, and Toyo Suisan, arriving later, pursued a penetration strategy of its own under the Maruchan brand, centred on the market of Mexican immigrant households.

Through the 1990s the company steadily added production and sales subsidiaries at home and abroad: Shinto Bussan Co., Ltd. (now a consolidated subsidiary) in May 1991, Imari Toyo Co., Ltd. in Imari, Saga prefecture in September 1993, Fresh Diner Co., Ltd. in Funabashi, Chiba prefecture in April 1995, and Mitsuwa Dairy Co., Ltd. in Kobe, Hyogo prefecture in April 1997. Over the same period the overseas noodle business covered North America and Latin America from three bases — Maruchan, Inc. in California, Maruchan Virginia, Inc. on the east coast, and Maruchan de Mexico in Mexico. During the presidency of Tsutsumi Tadashi (堤殷, 2003–2012, some nine years) the overseas noodle business took its commanding position in the Mexican-American market: by FY2015 (the year ended March 2016) overseas instant noodles turned over $638.7M (¥77bn) with an operating profit of $100M (¥12bn), a margin of 15.7 per cent, against domestic instant noodles at $1.0B (¥124bn) and $82.6M (¥10bn), a margin of 8.1 per cent. The overseas margin ran above the domestic one as a settled fact of the business, and Toyo Suisan came to be described as the only Japanese manufacturer whose overseas instant-noodle operation was more profitable than its home one.

That competitive advantage rested not on being early but on localisation — matching the flavours, the packaging and the sales channels to the food culture of Mexican immigrants. Where Nissin Foods took its Cup Noodles into the world with largely Japanese-style flavours under a single global specification, Toyo Suisan developed products for Latin American tastes — Ramen Half-Time, Ramen Picante and the like, the latter hot with chilli — and the brand embedded itself as part of the everyday Mexican-American home kitchen. Toyo Suisan built, inside the Mexican-American community, a position as the largest maker in the instant-ramen category in North America: a standing scarcely known in its own country.

Consolidating the domestic business and tidying up the listed subsidiaries (2000–2013)

In March 2000 Yutaka Foods Co., Ltd., an affiliate of Toyo Suisan, listed its shares on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange; in January 2007 Toyo Suisan absorbed Tago Seihyo Co., Ltd. by merger; and in October 2009 it took its listed subsidiary Fukushima Foods Co., Ltd. (formerly Date Shokuhin) into full ownership through a share exchange. Group companies were listed and rationalised in parallel, and Toyo Suisan settled into the role of a parent company governing a family of domestic subsidiaries much as a holding company would. Since the founding of Yokosuka Suisan in 1953 the founder, Mori Kazuo, had served as president for forty-two years; Hashimoto Akiaki (橋本晃明) became the second president in 1995, and Tsutsumi Tadashi appeared as the third in 2003.

Tsutsumi’s presidency (2003–2012, some nine years) was a period in which steady growth in the domestic noodle business ran alongside expansion of the overseas one. Consolidated revenue of $2.7B (¥326bn) and ordinary profit of $133.3M (¥16bn) in FY2001 (the year ended March 2002) became revenue of $3.5B (¥306bn) and ordinary profit of $309.9M (¥27bn) in FY2010 (the year ended March 2011): revenue almost flat, profit up about 1.7 times, as the company shifted towards a high-margin constitution. Obata Kazuo (小畑一雄) became the fourth president in 2012 and Imamura Masaya (今村将也) the fifth in June 2014 — a graduate of the commerce faculty of Chuo University who had joined the company in April 1981 — and through to the appointment of Sumimoto Noritaka (住本憲隆) as the sixth president in June 2023, Toyo Suisan held to a stable earnings structure and a conservative management style while the overseas noodle business piled up its contribution to profit.

The company’s organisational culture kept a tradition running back to Mori Kazuo’s own tenure — quiet quality and distribution rather than showy advertising — and among listed food manufacturers Toyo Suisan is known for its caution over mergers, acquisitions and capital spending. Through the instant-noodle industry of the 1990s and after, Nissin Foods, Sanyo Foods, Acecook and others entered and withdrew from one field after another; Toyo Suisan held back from investing in newly entered areas and concentrated its resources on improving the earning power of the businesses it already had — instant noodles, cold storage and chilled foods. That conservatism looked unremarkable in the short run, but over the long run it held down the risk of negative goodwill and impairment, and it produced a management style that yielded a stable profit constitution.

Imamura Masaya: earnings expand as overseas noodles become the stable profit base (2014–2023)

In June 2014 Imamura Masaya became president and representative director. A graduate of the commerce faculty of Chuo University who had joined the company in April 1981, he had served as manager of the Kansai branch among other posts, becoming a director in 2011 and an executive vice-president in 2013 before taking the presidency — a promotion out of the sales side of the business. The Imamura years (2014–2023, some nine years) were a period of expansion in both revenue and profit: from revenue of $3.6B (¥381bn), an operating profit of $237.2M (¥25bn) and a net profit of $159.7M (¥17bn) in FY2014 (the year ended March 2015), the company grew to revenue of $3.5B (¥489bn), an operating profit of $474.7M (¥67bn) and a net profit of $396.4M (¥56bn) in FY2023 (the year ended March 2024) — about 1.3 times the revenue and roughly three times the profit.

The expansion under Imamura combined the strength of the Maruchan brand in the North American and Mexican noodle markets with the translation effect of a weak yen on the profits of the overseas subsidiaries. In FY2020 (the year ended March 2021), when the pandemic drove demand for food eaten at home, instant-noodle demand surged worldwide and Toyo Suisan posted revenue of $3.2B (¥341bn), an operating profit of $340.9M (¥36bn) and a net profit of $271.6M (¥29bn) — a record at the time — after which a run of weak-yen years lifted profit to another level again, a net profit of $396.4M (¥56bn) in FY2023 (the year ended March 2024). Net profit almost doubled in the three years from FY2020 to FY2023, as pandemic demand, the exchange rate and pricing power abroad blew from behind at once.

The board and the management policy under Imamura put their weight on improving the earning power of the existing businesses rather than on sudden structural reform. In contrast to Nissin Foods, which converted to a holding-company structure and consolidated its group in 2008, Toyo Suisan continued to run its group as a single joint-stock company, simplifying the organisation by taking subsidiaries — Kofu Toyo, Fukushima Foods, Yutaka Foods, Shuetsu and others — into full ownership or absorbing them by merger. After the announcement of the succession in May 2023, Imamura moved to the post of chairman of the board and handed over to Sumimoto Noritaka.

Sumimoto Noritaka takes over in 2023 and strengthens the overseas business (2023–2026)

On 12 May 2023 Toyo Suisan announced that Sumimoto Noritaka, an executive vice-president, would become its next president — the first change at the top in nine years. Sumimoto joined the company in 1988 and held posts including president and director at the US subsidiaries Maruchan, Inc. and Maruchan Virginia, Inc., giving him direct operating experience of the overseas instant-noodle business. A graduate of the faculty of business administration at Konan University, he took office as a manager who knew at first hand the front line of the overseas noodle business that the founder, Mori Kazuo, had built.

The early results under Sumimoto were revenue of $3.5B (¥489bn), an operating profit of $474.7M (¥67bn) and a net profit of $396.4M (¥56bn) in FY2023 (the year ended March 2024), then revenue of $3.4B (¥508bn), an operating profit of $498.3M (¥76bn), an ordinary profit of $553.8M (¥84bn) and a net profit of $415.2M (¥63bn) in FY2024 (the year ended March 2025) — record profits set in successive years. The North American market share of the overseas noodle business inherited from the Imamura years, together with the stable earnings of the chilled and processed-food operations, carry the results. Sumimoto’s hands-on experience of the overseas noodle business — as president and director of Maruchan, Inc. and Maruchan Virginia, Inc. — is the most valuable career record inside the group, and it puts at the top of the company a man whose experience lies exactly where Toyo Suisan’s core advantage lies: the management of overseas subsidiaries, the strategy of localisation, and the reading of Mexican-American tastes.

Sumimoto’s tasks are to expand the overseas noodle business further — Mexico, South America, South-East Asia — to strengthen the company’s resilience against currency and raw-material swings, and to build the succession structure that will carry the global value of the Maruchan brand, built over the seventy-three years since Yokosuka Suisan was founded in 1953, on to the next generation. A brand name that began as a nickname for the founder’s eldest daughter has grown into a world brand that reaches the table of Mexican and American households as a matter of daily routine, and Toyo Suisan now stands somewhere beyond the stereotype of “a Japanese instant-noodle company”. At the interim results briefing of 31 October 2025 (official PDF) the questions ran to the response to private-label competition in North America, the handling of volatile raw-material procurement costs, and the possibility of expansion into emerging markets such as South-East Asia. How Sumimoto, over a term of the next three to five years, designs the geographical extension of the overseas noodle business into South America and South-East Asia, the improvement of the domestic noodle business’s earning power, and the growth of the adjacent chilled and processed-food operations will decide Toyo Suisan’s next stage.