Nisshinbo Holdings - Company History

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Financial history 1952–2025 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1907
Founder Fukuzawa Momosuke
Founding location 東京都中央区
Core business at founding Manufacture and sale of cotton yarn and cotton cloth
Listed 1949
President Ishii Seiji President since 2025 (age 61, as of 2026)
Current priority Business restructuring · Earnings recovery Restructuring the micro devices business and concentrating the group on wireless
Founding
On 5 February 1907 Nisshinbo Industries was established at Kameido in Tokyo with capital of ¥10 million, and Hiranuma Senzo took office as its first chairman. It built 59,028 spindles immediately after incorporation and began operations in June the following year, only for the head-office mill to be damaged by the recession that followed the boom and by severe flooding across the Kanto region. Miyajima Seijiro, brought in as senior managing director in August 1914, bought Takaoka Spinning and Okazaki Spinning and raised new mills at Qingdao and Nagoya, so that by 1921 the company held six mills, 230,000 spindles and 1,215 looms. In February 1933 it set up Nisshin Rayon to move into man-made fibre, holding everything from yarn through to finished cotton cloth within one company. Wartime requisitioning of machinery and the transfer of equipment to territories overseas left it with 179,000 spindles at the end of the war.
The Decision
Nisshinbo has swapped its main business roughly every thirty years, moving with the industry it sells to. Earnings from cotton spinning paid for the friction material of the automotive brake business, and new plants followed: chemicals at Tatebayashi in 1981, precision machinery at Miai in 1986. In December 2005 a tender offer made New Japan Radio a consolidated subsidiary, and that was the trigger for the move to a holding company — in April 2009 the company renamed itself Nisshinbo Holdings and split five operating companies out of itself. In December 2010 it brought Japan Radio Co. into the group, and in September 2011 it acquired the entire share capital of TMD Friction, the leading European maker of brake friction material. TMD turned the brake business from an operating profit of $52.6M (¥4bn) in the year to March 2012 into a loss of $44.1M (¥4bn) the year after, and in November 2023 the whole holding was sold.
Today
The highest segment margin belongs not to wireless and not to semiconductors but to real estate. Of consolidated revenue of $3.4B (¥502bn) and operating profit of $176.4M (¥26bn) in the year to December 2025, Wireless and Communications was the largest business, with $1.7B (¥252bn) of revenue and $117.6M (¥18bn) of segment profit. Real estate turned over $119.6M (¥18bn) for a segment profit of $84.2M (¥13bn), a margin of seventy per cent. Micro Devices, by contrast, lost $36.8M (¥6bn) on revenue of $417M (¥62bn), and the chemicals business booked an impairment loss of $27.4M (¥4bn). Textiles, the business still named in the company name, came to no more than $222.5M (¥33bn) of revenue and $601,403 (¥90m) of profit. Since Hitachi Kokusai Electric became a subsidiary in December 2023, wireless equipment for public-sector customers has accounted for two-thirds of consolidated operating profit.
Competition
Prices were set one way when the customer was a carmaker, and are set another way now that the customer is government. In the summer of 1967 Makuuchi, then a managing director, said that parts makers could differentiate themselves only on quality and price, and that having gone on meeting carmakers' demands for price cuts twice a year they were close to the limit. Toray, which came out of the same spinning industry, rejected moving out of fibre in 1975 and stayed in it; Nisshinbo instead shrank textiles to 6.6 per cent of consolidated revenue, and in April 2017 transferred its paper products business to Daio Paper. As the buyer shifted from one demanding price cuts twice a year to one ordering by tender and annual budget, the consolidated operating margin rose from 2.3 per cent in the year to December 2023 to 5.3 per cent in the year to December 2025.

Timeline

1907–1999From a Shibusawa-lineage spinning mill to the run-up to a diversified group

  1. 1907Nisshinbo Industries founded at Kameido, Tokyo, with ¥10m capital
  2. 1908First 59,028 spindles start up
  3. 1914Miyajima Seijiro joins as senior managing director
  4. 1919Okazaki Spinning bought; Qingdao and Nagoya mills raised in the same year
  5. 1933Nisshin Rayon founded to move into man-made fibre
  6. 1940Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange; Toa Jitsugyo established
  7. 1945About 80 per cent of plant lost in the war; Sakurada Takeshi becomes president
  8. 1958Tokushima mill opened
  9. 1961Designated to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  10. 1966Fujieda mill opened; rehabilitation of Toho Rayon begun
  11. 1972NISSHINBO DO BRASIL set up in Brazil
  12. 1981Tatebayashi chemical plant opened
  13. 1986Miai machine-tool plant opened
  14. 1987Hamakita precision plant opened
  15. 1989KOHBUNSHI (THAILAND) LTD. established
  16. 1993Head office moves to Nihonbashi-Ningyocho; Pudong Kohbunshi set up in Shanghai
  17. 1996NISSHINBO SOMBOON AUTOMOTIVE set up in Thailand
  18. 1997NISSHINBO AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING set up in the United States
  19. 1999SAERON AUTOMOTIVE CORPORATION set up in South Korea

2000–2017The holding company, and a wholesale redrawing of the business through JRC and TMD

  1. 2000Continental Teves set up as a joint venture; further stake taken in PT. NIKAWA of Indonesia
  2. 2005SAERON AUTOMOTIVE lists on the Korea Exchange
  3. 2005Tender offer makes New Japan Radio a consolidated subsidiary
  4. 2009Holding-company structure adopted; renamed Nisshinbo Holdings, five operating companies split off
  5. 2010Tender offer brings JRC and Nagano Japan Radio into consolidation
  6. 2011Entire share capital of TMD FRICTION GROUP acquired for about €440m
  7. 2013Kawata Masaya becomes president; Alphatron Marine consolidated
  8. 2014Nisshinbo Textile absorbs Nisshin Denim; Yangzhou precision machinery venture set up
  9. 2015Tokyo Shirts and Nanbu Plastics acquired outright
  10. 2016JRC takes Nagano and Ueda Japan Radio into full ownership; Nisshin Toa merges with Iwao
  11. 2017Paper business transferred to Daio Paper after 110 years
  12. 2017JRC taken into full ownership through a share exchange

2018–2025A new fiscal year end, and the final reshaping of the portfolio

  1. 2018Shares of Ricoh Electronic Devices acquired; JRC Mobility established
  2. 2018Drum brake business sold; fiscal year end moved from March to December
  3. 2018New Japan Radio taken into full ownership through a share exchange
  4. 2019Murakami Masahiro becomes president; NJ Components acquired outright
  5. 2022New Japan Radio absorbs Ricoh Electronic Devices and becomes Nisshinbo Micro Devices
  6. 2022Moves to the Prime Market; precision machining venture set up in Gurgaon, India
  7. 2023Entire share capital of TMD FRICTION GROUP sold after twelve years
  8. 2023HVJ Holdings acquired, bringing Hitachi Kokusai Electric into the group
  9. 2024Hitachi Kokusai Electric renamed Kokusai Electric
  10. 2025Ishii Seiji becomes president; Murakami moves to the chairmanship
  11. 2025Continental Teves renamed Omobio

Founding Story

1907–1999From a Shibusawa-lineage spinning mill to the run-up to a diversified group

For its first ninety years Nisshinbo was a cotton spinner that kept acquiring businesses it had never been founded to run — rival mills before the war, then chemicals, precision machinery and automotive brakes after the first oil shock had made spinning alone look like a dead end. By the end of the 1990s the word for spinning was still in the company's name, but the growth was coming from brake friction material and a chain of overseas plants built to supply it.

Founded under chairman Hiranuma Senzo, put on its feet by Miyajima Seijiro

In February 1907, in the years just after the Russo-Japanese War, Nisshin Boseki — Nisshinbo Industries (日清紡績) — was born at Kameido in Tokyo[1][2]. It was incorporated on 5 February 1907 with capital of ¥10 million, of which ¥2.5 million was paid in[3], and Hiranuma Senzo (平沼専蔵) took office as its first chairman[4]. This was the spinning boom of the late Meiji period, when substituting domestic production for imported cotton yarn was national policy, and the company put up a first block of 59,028 spindles immediately after incorporation, beginning operations in June 1908[5]. In March 1910 it bought Teikoku Seishi (帝国製絲) of Kyoto, with 13,000 spindles, as a move to expand[6]; but in the reaction that followed, severe flooding across the Kanto region damaged the head-office mill[7], and the young company found itself in difficulty almost at once.

The turn away from that difficulty came with Miyajima Seijiro (宮島清次郎), brought in as senior managing director in August 1914[8]. Miyajima bought Takaoka Spinning (10,000 spindles) in 1915 and Okazaki Spinning (16,000 spindles) in 1919, and in that same year raised two new mills — Qingdao with 20,000 spindles and Nagoya with 110,000[9] — so that by 1921 he had built the firm into a major spinner with six mills, 230,000 spindles and 1,215 looms[10]. Promoted to president in September 1919, Miyajima moved into man-made fibre in February 1933 by founding Nisshin Rayon, completing an integrated chain from yarn through to finished cotton cloth[11]. Under the wartime controls that took hold from 1935, however, the company was ordered to surrender machinery and to transfer equipment to territories overseas, and its plant shrank sharply; with defeat in the Pacific War it lost roughly 80 per cent of its equipment, down to 179,000 spindles at the end of the war[12]. Miyajima stepped up to chairman in December 1940, and the presidency passed by way of Washio Yuhei (鷲尾勇平) to Sakurada Takeshi (桜田武) in December 1945[13].

After the war Nisshinbo worked to recover the plant it had held before it, and by 1955 had rebuilt and expanded to ten textile mills, 538,000 cotton spindles and 6,752 looms[14]. It did not stop at textiles: it moved into chemicals, machine tools, paper and printing, pushing diversification across the business[15]. New production sites followed one after another — the Tokushima mill (today the Tokushima works) in June 1958, designation to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange in October 1961, the Fujieda mill (today the Fujieda works) in January 1966[16] — and in December 1972 it set up NISSHINBO DO BRASIL INDUSTRIA TEXTIL LTDA. to secure a production base abroad[17]. From the first oil shock of October 1973, as crude prices and the rise of Korean and Taiwanese producers left the Japanese textile industry in structural decline, Nisshinbo widened its ground beyond fibre. It opened the Tatebayashi chemical plant (today the Tatebayashi works) in November 1981 to put the chemicals business on a proper footing[18], and started in precision machinery with the Miai machine-tool plant in April 1986 and the Hamakita precision plant in January 1987[19] — so that by the late 1980s, with the word for spinning still in its name, the company had spread its business across chemicals, precision machinery and automotive components.

Taking the brake business overseas, and laying the ground for New Japan Radio and JRC

A run of overseas subsidiaries began with KOHBUNSHI (THAILAND) LTD. in January 1989, later renamed NISSHINBO MECHATRONICS (THAILAND) LTD.[20] The Chiba plant (today the Asahi works) opened in July 1992[21]; the head office moved to 2-chome Nihonbashi-Ningyocho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo in April 1993[22]; and in July of that year Pudong Kohbunshi (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (浦東高分子（上海）有限公司) was established in China[23]. NISSHINBO SOMBOON AUTOMOTIVE CO., LTD. followed in Thailand in June 1996[24], NISSHINBO AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING INC. in the United States in March 1997[25], PT. GISTEX NISSHINBO INDONESIA — later PT. NISSHINBO INDONESIA — in Indonesia in April 1998[26], and SAERON AUTOMOTIVE CORPORATION in South Korea in March 1999[27].

The cluster of overseas subsidiaries founded through the second half of the 1990s was investment aimed above all at building a global supply network for the automotive brake business. Nisshinbo had been making friction material for vehicles since before the war, and Murakami Masahiro (村上雅洋) explained the lineage in a February 2021 interview with the online edition of 事業構想 (Business Planning): At first glance spinning and brakes look to have nothing to do with each other, but the reason we won the orders was that spinning technology could be transferred to making friction material out of asbestos. That technical descent — the accumulated craft of spinning applied to the manufacture of friction material — was the foundation on which a cotton spinner turned itself into an automotive parts maker. Through the 1990s the business was recomposed on two tracks at once: textiles contracting, automotive brakes expanding.

In December 2000 the company set up Continental Teves Co., Ltd., a joint venture with the German components group Continental intended to strengthen the competitiveness of the brake business[28]. In the same month it took an additional stake in PT. NIKAWA TEXTILE INDUSTRY of Indonesia[29], keeping the overseas production base for textiles in order alongside. Across the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Nisshinbo turned itself into a diversified company standing on four pillars — textiles, automotive brakes, chemicals and precision machinery. For a firm approaching a century since its founding, the shift from single-business cotton spinner to conglomerate was the cumulative result of a diversification pursued, step by step, as the answer to a depressed textile trade.

The post-war line of presidents, and the decisions behind diversification

Miyajima Seijiro, promoted to president in September 1919, secured the company's base by modernising its machinery and building an integrated chain from yarn through to finished cotton cloth. He stepped up to chairman in December 1940, and the presidency passed by way of Washio Yuhei (鷲尾勇平) to Sakurada Takeshi in December 1945[30]. The survey volume 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji) records that the defining feature of the post-war Nisshinbo was management on a thoroughly liberal economic philosophy, and the rationalisation of management, and that this rationalist approach was carried forward by presidents Miyajima Seijiro, Sakurada Takeshi and Tsuyuguchi Toru (露口達) in turn[31]. In an industry then written off as declining, the company was unusual for its high earnings and its steadiness: from the term ended October 1964 onward it paid a 14 per cent dividend without a break, and never cut it out of concern for results[32]. In these years Nisshinbo held its footing on the earnings of cotton spinning while producing executives of national standing, keeping a position well beyond that of an ordinary spinning firm.

Under Tsuyuguchi Toru (露口達), who succeeded to Sakurada's line[33], Nisshinbo pushed diversification beyond textiles a stage further. At the end of 1966 it took on the rehabilitation of Toho Rayon, sending its own managing director Mafune Seizo (真船清蔵) in as that company's president[34]. By the survey volume marking the sixtieth anniversary of its founding, the company had raised capital nine times since the war to $11.1M (¥4bn), was turning over about $133.3M (¥48bn) a year for a profit of roughly $4.2M (¥2bn), and employed some 10,000 people across thirteen plants[35] — a portrait of a spinner that had made itself over into a rationally diversified enterprise. Tsuyuguchi said in 1975[36]: We have always managed with a downturn in mind, so that we never have to cut anybody loose. The commitment to steadiness through good years and bad held even through the high-growth decades. As the whole textile industry fell into structural depression after the 1973 oil shock, Nisshinbo's executives came to share the view that spinning alone had no future, and from the 1980s widened the business into chemicals, precision machinery and automotive components.

Under Mochizuki Akihiro (望月朗宏), president in the mid-1980s, Sashida Teiichi (指田禎一) in the 1990s and Iwashita Takashi (岩下俊士) in the 2000s, the portfolio was recomposed in turn. The plants raised in quick succession through the 1980s — Tatebayashi chemicals in 1981, the Miai machine-tool works in 1986, the Hamakita precision works in 1987[37] — all belonged to fields outside textiles. Diversification proceeded by stacking up, one step at a time, a contraction in fibre against an expansion outside it; behind those decisions lay a recognition shared by the post-war line of presidents that the company had to become a composite. In the years leading up to its centenary, Nisshinbo laid the groundwork for the diversified group it would become.

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Notes

  1. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  2. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  3. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  4. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  5. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  6. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  7. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  8. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  9. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  10. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  11. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  12. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  13. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  14. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  15. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  16. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  17. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  18. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  19. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  20. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  21. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  22. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  23. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  24. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  25. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  26. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  27. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  28. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  29. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩
  30. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  31. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  32. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  33. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  34. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  35. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
  36. Nikkei Business, November 1975, interview with Tsuyuguchi Toru, then chairman of Nisshinbo↩
  37. Nisshinbo Holdings, annual securities report for the 183rd term (year ended December 2025), corporate-history section↩

References & sources

  1. Nisshinbo Holdings Inc. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, segment disclosures and the FY2025 consolidated filing; the medium-term management plan 2026 progress materials.
  2. Gekkan Keizai, August 1967, on Makuuchi, then a managing director of Nisshinbo. NDL Digital Collections.
  3. {{i:}} (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968), the Nisshinbo entry.
  4. Nikkei Business, November 1975, interview with Tsuyuguchi Toru, then chairman of Nisshinbo. {{i:}} (The Management of Nisshinbo) by Sakurada Takeshi, president, 1979.

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