Terumo - Company History

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Financial history 1962–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1921
Founder Kitasato Shibasaburo and fellow physicians
Founding location 東京市下谷区
Core business at founding Domestically made mercury clinical thermometers
Listed 1982
President Samejima Hikaru President since 2024 (age 62, as of 2026)
Current priority M&A · Overseas expansion Growing the cardiac and vascular business, and moving production into three blocs sited close to demand
Founding
In September 1921, Sekisen Ken-onki Co., Ltd. was incorporated at Shitaya-ku in the city of Tokyo with capital of ¥500,000. Behind it lay the First World War, which had cut off imports of Jena-made clinical thermometers from Germany and left hospitals, the army and the public health administration alike without a source of supply. Medical scientists from the circle of the Institute for Infectious Diseases — Kitasato Shibasaburo (北里柴三郎) and Miyajima Mikinosuke (宮島幹之助) among them — put up the medical authority, and businessmen such as Morishita Hiroshi (森下博), founder of Jintan, put up the capital and the pharmaceutical distribution network; the company that resulted was launched to do one thing, make the clinical thermometer in Japan. The first thermometer went on sale in February the following year, 1922. The “Sekisen” — red line — in the name was a claim about quality, the precision with which the red graduation line was cut, and the localising of that single product was the whole reason the company existed. That one product stayed the mainstay for more than forty years from the founding, and the name did not become Terumo Corporation until October 1974.
The Decision
The company moved its mainstay from an instrument used for decades to a consumable thrown away after one use. The disposable plastic syringe launched in January 1963 ran head-on into the hospital habit of boiling glass syringes and using them again, but it came to be accepted on a single point — the risk of hepatitis infection that re-use carried. The Fujinomiya plant in 1964 and the Ashitaka plant in 1970 widened volume production, and in 1971 the company placed its own companies in Belgium and the United States. The name was brought into line with the business in October 1974, eleven years after the mainstay had left the thermometer behind. After a consolidated loss in the year to March 1992, Wachi Takashi (和地孝) came across from Fuji Bank to become president in June 1995 and brought in the TBU structure, running a horizontal bar through the vertical silos. Changing how employees worked before changing what the businesses were is what put the company in a state to carry out the overseas acquisitions that began in 1999.
Today
Six-tenths of revenue and seven-tenths of profit come from cardiac and vascular. Of revenue of $7.2B (¥1.13tn) and operating profit of $1.1B (¥176bn) in the year to March 2026, the Cardiac and Vascular Company accounted for $4.3B (¥676bn) of sales and $1.0B (¥164bn) of profit. The rest is Blood and Cell Technologies at $1.5B (¥231bn) and $212.4M (¥34bn), and Medical Care Solutions at $1.4B (¥216bn) and $136.6M (¥22bn); the general medical disposables that descend from the thermometer sit in that third one. By region, the Americas at $2.8B (¥443bn) are twice Japan at $1.4B (¥223bn), and overseas is 80 per cent of revenue. Weighting the mix towards therapeutic devices built around catheters and cardiopulmonary bypass is what carried a company that lost money in the year to March 1992 up to revenue of $6.7B (¥1tn). In September 2025 it bought a filling plant at Leverkusen in Germany for €150 million, entering contract manufacturing for pharmaceuticals — outside medical devices altogether.
Competition
The companies it bought from were never competitors; they were large firms getting out of the business. In June 1999 it took over the cardiopulmonary bypass business from 3M of the United States, which was clearing out its healthcare operations. In April 2011 it acquired CaridianBCT of the United States, a leader in the collection and processing of blood components, and in January 2017 it took on the haemostasis device business that was divested when Abbott and St. Jude merged. Terumo has gone on standing as the buyer for businesses the world's big device makers judge non-core and let go. In the same cardiovascular consumables, Asahi Intecc turned from a trading house in ultra-fine wire into a manufacturer of medical catheters — an entry that carried its own materials technology across — whereas Terumo has filled in whole treatment areas by purchase. What it picks up does not pay at once: CaridianBCT posted losses of $12.9M (¥1bn) in the year to March 2016 and $25.9M (¥3bn) in the year to March 2017, and took seven years to be turned into a shape that made money.

Timeline

1921–1962The home-made thermometer, and a forty-year run-up to medical disposables

  1. 1914The First World War cuts off imports of German clinical thermometers
  2. 1921Sekisen Ken-onki founded at Shitaya-ku, Tokyo, with capital of ¥500,000
  3. 1922The company's clinical thermometer goes on sale
  4. 1963Disposable plastic syringe launched
  5. 1964Fujinomiya plant opens
  6. 1970Ashitaka plant opens

1963–2010Overseas bases and M&A assemble a full-line medical device maker

  1. 1971Terumo Europe NV established in Belgium
  2. 1971Kimble Terumo established in the United States
  3. 1974Renamed Terumo Corporation
  4. 1983Kofu plant opens
  5. 1985Listing moved up to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  6. 1989Research and development centre opens
  7. 1991Suruga plant opens
  8. 1995Wachi Takashi (和地孝) becomes president
  9. 1995Terumo Medical Products (Hangzhou) established in China
  10. 1999Cardiopulmonary bypass business bought from 3M of the United States
  11. 2002Vascutek of Britain acquired
  12. 2005Mission Medical of the United States acquired
  13. 2006MicroVention acquired
  14. 2007Prosthetic heart valve business taken over from Kohler of Germany

2011–2024Growth areas filled in by acquisition, and production recast into three blocs

  1. 2011CaridianBCT of the United States acquired
  2. 2016Sequent Medical of the United States acquired
  3. 2017Haemostasis device business bought from St. Jude / Abbott
  4. 2017Bolton Medical of the United States acquired
  5. 2017Sato Shinjiro becomes president and CEO
  6. 2018Essen Technology of China acquired, strengthening production inside China
  7. 2022GS26 medium-term management plan launched
  8. 2022Rika automated blood collection device enters limited launch
  9. 2023Production policy recast from optimal global siting into three blocs
  10. 2024Sixty centres rolled out with Rika
  11. 2024Samejima Hikaru (鮫島光) becomes president and CEO
  12. 2024Terumo Ventures, a corporate venture capital arm, established

Founding Story

1921–1962The home-made thermometer, and a forty-year run-up to medical disposables

Terumo was created in 1921 for a single purpose — to make in Japan the clinical thermometer that the First World War had cut off at source — and for more than four decades that one product remained the whole of the business. When the company finally broke out of it in 1963, with a plastic syringe meant to be thrown away, it did so by carrying the volume-manufacturing habits of the thermometer into a product that consumed itself.

A start in import substitution, backed by Kitasato Shibasaburo

In September 1921, Sekisen Ken-onki Co., Ltd. was incorporated at Shitaya-ku in the city of Tokyo with capital of ¥500,000[1][2][3]. Behind it lay the First World War, which had severed imports of clinical thermometers from Germany and left Japanese medicine needing a domestic supply. Dependence on a single country had shown its fragility in wartime, and a movement to raise a substitute source at home spread, led by medical scientists. The company was launched with the support of Kitasato Shibasaburo (北里柴三郎) and other medical scientists, and in February 1922 it put its thermometer on sale[4]. Localising the manufacture of one product, the clinical thermometer, was the starting point of the business, and it remained the company's mainstay for more than forty years from its founding. This was a business structure resting on an external condition — import substitution — and after the war, holding its position as a domestic thermometer maker remained the central task of management.

Through the war and the years that followed it, Terumo's business stayed within the bounds of measuring instruments and medical disposables built around the thermometer. Shortages of raw materials in wartime and the controls on medical goods after it left little capacity for developing new products, and no strength to move abroad or diversify. A long stretch followed in which production rose in step with the growth of the domestic medical market; the name was still Sekisen Ken-onki, and forty years after its founding the company had yet to become anything more than one maker of medical disposables. That long run-up prepared the ground for the turn that came next. Domestic demand for thermometers alone had a visible ceiling, and widening the product line by taking in a new technology — plastics moulding — was an unavoidable theme for management.

Betting on the plastic syringe, and making the market for it

In January 1963, Terumo launched a disposable plastic syringe[5]. In the Japan of that time it was normal practice to boil glass syringes and use them again, and single-use products met strong resistance from hospitals as costly and as generators of waste. Operating on the premise of re-use was embedded deep in hospital custom, equipment and economics, and switching away from it required strong outside pressure. Re-using a syringe, however, carried the risk of transmitting infections such as hepatitis, and in Europe and the United States the move to disposables was already under way. Terumo turned the volume-manufacturing know-how it had accumulated in thermometers to plastics moulding, and moved as the domestic first mover to create the market. It was a judgement in which an idea that ran against common sense — throwing the thing away — earned its logic on a single point, infection risk.

Going disposable was not simply a new product; it was a change in the structure of the business. Moving the main product from a durable good that could be used for decades, as a thermometer was, to a consumable premised on being discarded put demand on a stable and rising base. The Fujinomiya plant opened in 1964[6] and the Ashitaka plant in 1970[7], one after the other, and the range widened into plastic medical instruments such as syringes and infusion sets. The passage from domestic thermometer maker to maker of medical disposables was, in substance, complete within that decade. The name Sekisen Ken-onki nevertheless remained, so that to the outside world the image of a thermometer company persisted, and the gap with what the business actually was widened year by year. What was needed next was to put the name, and the overseas bases, in order.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  2. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  5. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  6. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩
  7. Terumo, securities report, corporate history section↩

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