ADEKA - Company History

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Financial history 1952–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1917
Origin 古河合名会社
Founding location 東京都荒川区
Core business at founding Caustic soda by electrolysis, and hardened oil made from the by-product hydrogen
Listed 1949
President Shirozume Hidetaka President since 2018 (age 64, as of 2026)
Current priority Capacity investment · Higher value added Expanding semiconductor-materials capacity and widening the product range
Founding
In January 1917 Asahi Denka Kogyo was established at Ogu in Kita-Toshima, Tokyo, with capital of ¥1 million, formed by reorganising Tokyo Denka Kogyosho, a works in the Furukawa Gomei group. Its purpose was to make at home, by electrolysis, the caustic soda Japan had been importing, and alongside that it took the hydrogen electrolysis inevitably gives off, added it to fish oil, and made hardened oil its second business. From there it widened into soap, glycerine and margarine, and in 1928 it separated off the agricultural chemicals division to establish Nihon Nohyaku. It listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1949 and changed its name to ADEKA in 2006. Holding inorganic soda and organic fats together from the very start is what later produced both the additives business and the food business.
The Decision
The company has earned its living not from the material at the centre but from the things mixed into it. In 1955 it put out a stabiliser for PVC and entered polymer additives, and in 1962 it widened into lubricant additives through a joint venture with Argus Chemical of the United States. Additives are used in small quantities, and whether they are adopted is decided by purity and formulation rather than by price. When the electrolysis business began making high-purity chlorine in 1981, that same control of purity led straight on into semiconductor materials. In 2018 the company made Nihon Nohyaku — the business it had cut out in 1928 — a consolidated subsidiary for about $181.2M (¥20bn), taking in the knowledge of handling approvals for agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Today
The centre of earnings is moving from the additives mixed into resin towards the materials that form films on semiconductors. In the year to March 2026 consolidated revenue was $2.6B (¥417bn) and operating profit $263M (¥42bn), both records. The breakdown was $1.4B (¥215bn) in Chemicals, $706.9M (¥112bn) in Life Science and $524.8M (¥83bn) in Food, and the $166.9M (¥26bn) of segment profit from Chemicals was more than six-tenths of the total. What is growing inside Chemicals is semiconductor materials, and in 2022 the company doubled in Korea its capacity for the high-dielectric ALD materials in which it holds the leading world share. Even so, the profit of the Chemicals business fell below the previous year on the swing of the market, so the growth and the swing sit inside the same business.
Competition
Even within semiconductor materials, the smaller the quantity used inside the tool, the better the price holds. ADEKA's high-dielectric materials are a small-volume item that goes into one film-forming step, and once they are adopted on a customer's volume production line they are not replaced for several years. That is a different way of spending money from the route Resonac took, acquiring back-end process materials as a block in order to stand level on scale. At home, Nissan Chemical holds a high margin in agrochemicals and functional materials, and by bringing Nihon Nohyaku under its wing ADEKA has come to stand in the same place. In 2025, though, it received a shareholder proposal calling for an end to the parent-subsidiary listing, so the shape of its capital is not settled.

Timeline

1917–1949Out of Furukawa electrochemistry: caustic soda and fats before the war

  1. 1915Furukawa Gomei begins research into caustic soda by electrolysis
  2. 1917Asahi Denka Kogyo founded with ¥1m capital
  3. 1918Ogu plant completed and starts caustic soda production
  4. 1919Manufacture of hardened oil begins, the second leg of the business
  5. 1922Toyosu plant completed
  6. 1927The fats and oils business of Nichiyu is acquired and absorbed
  7. 1928Agricultural chemicals division spun out as Nihon Nohyaku
  8. 1932Entry into synthetic resin with phenolic resin
  9. 1947Yoko Sangyo (now ADEKA Chemical Supply) set up for sales
  10. 1949Shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange

1949–2010Building the three pillars: polymer additives, food additives and electronic materials

  1. 1955Production of stabilisers for PVC begins — the start of polymer additives
  2. 1959Tokai Denka Kogyo set up with FMC and others (absorbed in 1999)
  3. 1962Adeka Argus joint venture with Argus Chemical of the United States
  4. 1966Akashi plant completed and in operation
  5. 1967Oxirane Chemical formed with Adeka Argus Chemical and three others
  6. 1970First phase of the Kashima plant completed and running
  7. 1979Main Ogu processes halted and moved to Kashima and Chiba
  8. 1981High-purity chlorine production begins, the door into electronic materials
  9. 1988ADEKA (Singapore) set up as an overseas edible-oils base
  10. 1994AMFINE Chemical formed with Mitsubishi Corp. and MIC of the US
  11. 1996Soma plant completed and in operation
  12. 2000Finishing processes at five domestic plants spun out by EBO
  13. 2005All shares in Uehara Foods acquired
  14. 2006Renamed ADEKA; head office moved to Arakawa, Tokyo

2010–2025World share in semiconductor materials, and the redesign under ADEKA VISION 2030

  1. 2011Kori Akio becomes president; ADEKA Al Ghurair Additives starts up
  2. 2012AM Stabilizers buys the PVC stabiliser business of Hammond Group
  3. 2016Food distributor Crown made a subsidiary; stake raised in Showa Kosan
  4. 2017Shirozume Hidetaka becomes president and representative director
  5. 2018Nihon Nohyaku made a consolidated subsidiary by tender offer and share issue
  6. 2021Converted to a company with an audit and supervisory committee
  7. 2022Capacity for high-k materials doubled at ADEKA Korea's second Jeonju plant
  8. 2023ADEKA VISION 2030 begins; Incubation Alliance made a subsidiary
  9. 2023ADEKA Sogo Setsubi merges Asahi Architects to streamline the group
  10. 2025Uehara Foods sold to Kobe Bussan for ¥700m
  11. 2025Record result in the year to March 2025 on generative-AI semiconductor demand

Founding Story

1917–1949Out of Furukawa electrochemistry: caustic soda and fats before the war

ADEKA was incorporated in January 1917 as the chemical arm of the Furukawa zaibatsu, formed to make caustic soda by electrolysis at a moment when the First World War had cut Japan off from imported supply. Within two years the hydrogen that the electrolytic cells gave off had been turned into hardened oil, and by the end of the 1930s the company stood on three chemistries at once — inorganic, oleochemical and synthetic resin — a shape it would still recognisably hold a century later.

Two legs built by the Furukawa chemical arm: electrolytic soda and a bought-in fats business

ADEKA's origin lies in 1915 (Taisho 4), when Furukawa Gomei (古河合名会社) took the lead in beginning research into caustic soda by electrolysis[1]. The research body, Tokyo Denka Kogyosho (東京電化工業所), was reorganised, and in January 1917 Asahi Denka Kogyo (旭電化工業) was founded with capital of ¥1 million for the purpose of manufacturing caustic soda by the electrolytic route[2]. The name Asahi Denka — the rising sun joined to electrochemistry — is said to express the founding ambition of raising up the electrochemical industry like the dawn. Furukawa Gomei was the core of the Furukawa zaibatsu, which held Furukawa Mining (now Furukawa Co.), Furukawa Electric and Yokohama Rubber among others, and Asahi Denka carried its chemical division. In November 1928 the agricultural chemicals division was separated off to establish Nihon Nohyaku (日本農薬)[3], narrowing the company towards its speciality.

The Ogu plant was completed in January 1918 and began operating caustic soda[4], and in December 1922 the Toyosu plant was finished. For a second leg behind electrolytic soda the company looked to fats and oils: in 1919 (Taisho 8) it began manufacturing hardened oil, and with that the foundation of an integrated chemical works holding both soda and fats was in place[5]. Then in December 1927 it acquired and absorbed the fats and oils business of Nichiyu (日油株式会社), which had fallen into difficulty in the post-First World War slump, expanding into fats and oils — margarine, shortening and glycerine. The business structure of combining the chemical process technology accumulated in electrolytic soda with the processes of oleochemistry was formed here. Widening its field not by building capacity itself but by buying the businesses of firms in trouble was a method Asahi Denka used repeatedly from this period on. The company had one of the larger captive thermal power stations in the industry, and by supplying its own electricity it kept operations steady[6]. The two legs of electrolytic soda and fats shaped the frame of Asahi Denka as a chemical manufacturer.

Into synthetic resin, through war production, to the 1949 listing on three bases

With caustic soda and hardened oil as its footing, Asahi Denka broadened its range early. It took up the manufacture of soap, hydrochloric acid and glycerine, and in the early Showa years added margarine, fatty acids, liquefied chlorine, sodium silicate and bleach liquor one after another[7]. In April 1932 it moved into synthetic resin (phenolic resin), adding a third field of chemistry behind caustic soda and fats. The configuration in which inorganic chemistry cultivated in electrolytic soda, the oleochemistry obtained through the Nichiyu acquisition, and the organic chemistry of synthetic resin stood side by side was settled before the war. Caustic soda is a basic material for a wide range of industries — glass, textiles, paper — and fats can be taken into both edible and industrial uses. A structure holding several chemical fields rather than concentrating on a single line is the distant starting point of the later three-pillar system of polymer additives, food additives and electronic materials. As a Furukawa affiliate, the company also continued its dealings with Furukawa Electric in resins and insulating materials for cable.

Through the war years it carried out production of military chemicals, and in 1947 it established Yoko Sangyo (陽光産業, now ADEKA Chemical Supply) to sell its products, putting the commercial chain from manufacture to sale in order[8]. In May 1949 the shares were listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange[9]. The three business bases of the founding period — electrolytic soda, fats and oils, and synthetic resin — became the point of departure from which, inside the structure of the post-war chemical industry, the company would develop the three businesses of chemicals (the chemicals division), food (the fats, oils and food additives division) and functional chemicals. Although the dissolution of the zaibatsu took it out from under the control of the Furukawa holding company, it kept the Furukawa trading base intact and set out again as an independent listed chemical maker. After listing it held a structure through which it could raise money on the capital market, securing the funds for the capacity investment that post-war reconstruction demand called for.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  2. ADEKA, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. ADEKA, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. ADEKA, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  5. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  6. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  7. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  8. ADEKA, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  9. ADEKA, annual securities report, corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. ADEKA Corporation (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, segment disclosures and the tender-offer filings for Nihon Nohyaku.
  2. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Asahi Denka Kogyo entry.

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