NHK Spring - Company History
- Founding
- In June 1936 Shibaura Spring Works was founded at Shibaura in Tokyo with capital of ¥600,000, starting out on leaf springs for goods wagons and bolster springs for passenger carriages for Japanese National Railways. In September 1939, with investment from Nippon Kokan, Mitsubishi Corporation and Furukawa Mining, it took the name Nippon Hatsujo, moving from a workshop-scale predecessor to a supplier backed by zaibatsu capital. In November 1940 the Yokohama plant began work on suspension springs and the base of the company moved to Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture. In July 1943 it absorbed Dai Nippon Hatsujo, a maker of wire and thin flat springs, and in December of the same year the Ina plant in Nagano Prefecture began producing precision springs for clocks and watches, measuring instruments and communications equipment. It listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in March 1954.
- The Decision
- The same spring technology has been carried out into a different industry each time. The precision springs the Ina plant began making in December 1943 were small, high-accuracy parts for clocks, watches and measuring instruments. In May 1958 the company merged Daido Hatsujo, a major maker of suspension springs, and turned it into the Kawasaki plant; the following year, 1959, it spun the sales arm for automotive replacement springs out as Nippatsu Sales and put a nationwide distribution network in place. In June 1961 it raised the Toyota plant in the home ground of Toyota Motor and entered car seats, widening its field from spring components to a finished product, the seat itself. The Ina technology became a volume business half a century later: in October 1996 it added a dedicated works for hard-disk suspensions at Komagane in Nagano Prefecture, and in a duopoly with Hutchinson of the United States it came to hold 60 per cent of the world market. Carrying its manufacturing technology in small, high-accuracy springs from railway rolling stock to motor vehicles and then to hard disks, it grew a business that moves on a cycle of its own, apart from the motor industry.
- Today
- Hard-disk suspensions, no more than 15 per cent of sales, earn 57 per cent of operating profit. In the year ended March 2026 consolidated sales were $5.2B (¥817bn), operating profit $288.9M (¥46bn) and net profit $175.8M (¥28bn). DDS — disk drive suspensions — turned sales of $801.1M (¥127bn) into operating profit of $164.4M (¥26bn), a margin of 20.6 per cent, while suspension springs, the founding business, made $4.4M (¥700m) on $1.1B (¥167bn), a margin of 0.4 per cent, and seats made $50.6M (¥8bn) on $1.8B (¥293bn). In May 2024 the company put in place a way of running the businesses that sets the return on invested capital of each against its cost of capital, ranking DDS as a growth business and seats and suspension springs as subjects for structural reform. In the year it booked an impairment loss of $72.7M (¥12bn) on fixed assets, chiefly production equipment in Thailand, and net profit fell 42 per cent from $321.4M (¥48bn) a year earlier. The flow by which profit from automotive parts raised the precision-spring business has reversed, and profit from data centres now carries the rebuilding of the motor-vehicle side.
- Competition
- The company it competes with is not a fellow automotive-parts maker but a single firm, Hutchinson of the United States. Hard-disk suspensions are a duopoly between the two, and NHK Spring holds 60 per cent of the world market. What competition turns on there is not price but the tens of microns of thinness and accuracy that the high-capacity drives used in data centres demand. In automotive parts the number of suppliers is different. In seats, Toyota Boshoku — which rewrote its articles of incorporation in 1972 to turn from textiles to automotive parts — delivers to the same carmakers, and NHK Spring itself entered the Nissan supply chain in October 2001 through a joint venture with Faurecia of France. Seats, 36 per cent of sales, carry an operating margin of 2.8 per cent and suspension springs 0.4 per cent: the more suppliers a market holds, the thinner the margin. Holding at once a market with only two players and a market crowded with many is what made it necessary to run the businesses by applying a cost of capital to each.
Timeline
1936–1980From founding to listing, and the turn into an automotive parts maker
- 1936Shibaura Spring Works founded at Shibaura, Tokyo, with ¥600,000 capital
- 1939Renamed Nippon Hatsujo with backing from Nippon Kokan, Mitsubishi Corp and Furukawa Mining
- 1940Yokohama plant starts on suspension springs; head office moves to Yokohama
- 1943Ina plant comes on stream; precision-spring production begins
- 1943Dai Nippon Hatsujo absorbed, adding wire and thin flat springs
- 1953Management stake taken in Yokohama Kiko
- 1954Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange
- 1958Nippatsu Precision Industry established
- 1958Daido Hatsujo merged and becomes the Kawasaki plant
- 1959Replacement-spring sales spun out as Nippatsu Sales
- 1961Dedicated seat works raised at Toyota City, beside Toyota Motor
- 1963NHK Spring (Thailand) formed in Bangkok — first overseas site
- 1968Nippon Shaft becomes a subsidiary
- 1970Atsugi plant built for piping support systems
- 1973Shiga plant built for suspension springs
- 1980Sanchu Ko acquired and made the Komaki plant
1980–2010Going abroad, and the making of the HDD suspension business
- 1980Eguskia-NHK formed in Spain — first European production
- 1983Komagane plant built as a dedicated control-cable works
- 1986NHK-Associated Spring formed in the United States
- 1987General Seating of America formed with Lear; New Mather Metals bought from Neoax
- 1994NHK Manufacturing Malaysia established
- 1996Fabrini of Brazil bought jointly with Rassini of Mexico
- 1996Suspension Plant No. 2 added at Komagane for HDD suspensions
- 1998Equity participation in India's Jamna Group; Hiroshima plant closed
- 1999Suspension Plant No. 3 doubles HDD suspension capacity
- 2001Faurecia-Nippatsu formed with Faurecia of France
- 2002Guangzhou Rizheng Spring formed — entry into China
- 2005Tokushu Hatsujo Kogyo bought from Daido Steel
- 2009NHK Spring India consolidated as a subsidiary
- 2010Yokohama Kiko made wholly owned by share exchange
2011–2026Answering CASE, and capital-efficiency reform under a business tilted to HDD
- 2011NHK Electronics Technology (Dongguan) set up as the Chinese HDD suspension site
- 2011NHK Automotive Components India established; Nippatsu Investment set up to control China
- 2012Topura made a wholly owned subsidiary by share exchange; Nippatsu Sales likewise
- 2012Faurecia joint ventures extended to Xiangyang in China and to Indonesia
- 2013NHK Spring Mexico established
- 2014Holding company NHK Spring Europe established in the Netherlands
- 2015SSDs spread and PC-driven demand for HDD suspensions begins to shrink
- 2018Data-centre nearline HDDs of 10TB and above take over as the demand driver
- 2024Uemura Kazuhisa becomes president in April
- 2024The 2026 Medium-Term Management Plan published, with ROIC disclosed by segment
- 2026DDS earns 57% of group operating profit; suspension springs hold a 0.4% margin
Founding Story
1936–1980From founding to listing, and the turn into an automotive parts maker
In the forty-four years to 1980 NHK Spring turned a Tokyo leaf-spring shop into the maker of roughly six out of every ten springs produced in Japan, following its customers out of railway rolling stock and into the motor industry and raising a single-purpose factory beside each of them. Sales of $1.6M (¥576m) in 1951 had become $347.6M (¥79bn) by 1980 — growth bought by absorbing rival spring makers and by siting plants next to Toyota, Nissan and Honda rather than by holding one general-purpose works of its own.
Starting out as Shibaura Spring Works, making springs for railway rolling stock
NHK Spring's starting point is Shibaura Spring Works (芝浦スプリング製作所), incorporated on 6 June 1936 at Shibaura in Tokyo with capital of ¥600,000. Japan was then in the expansion that followed the Manchurian Incident, and demand for leaf springs for railway rolling stock and industrial machinery was growing. The founders came from the steel-trading and machinery businesses, and the initial product range centred on leaf springs for goods wagons and bolster springs for passenger carriages, both for Japanese National Railways; the survey volume 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji) records that from the outset the firm also made and sold leaf and coil springs for motor vehicles, at a time when Japan's motor industry had only just taken root at home and output was still slight. Three years after founding, on 8 September 1939, the company took investment from Nippon Kokan, Mitsubishi Corporation and Furukawa Mining and renamed itself Nippon Hatsujo Co., Ltd. (日本発条)[1] — the founding of the company as it exists today. The reorganisation strengthened its capital base and its raw-material procurement network through the participation of zaibatsu-affiliated trading houses and materials makers, and it marked the turn from a workshop-scale predecessor into a supplier backed by zaibatsu capital.
In November 1940 the Yokohama plant began operating on suspension springs, and the company moved its base to Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture at the same time. Yokohama was then a cluster of vehicle manufacturing sites belonging to Nissan Motor, Isuzu Motors and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which gave the location an advantage in setting up volume production of suspension springs for cars. The main line shifted from the railway leaf springs of the founding years to the growing business in suspension springs for motor vehicles. In December 1943 the Ina plant came on stream and precision-spring production began. Precision springs went into clocks and watches, measuring instruments and communications equipment, and the know-how in small, high-accuracy springs that would later become the technical source of the HDD suspension business was accumulated at that wartime Ina plant.
Under wartime controls the company also produced springs for military aircraft and ships, expanding output across the two sites at Yokohama and Ina. It raised capital several times over to build out its leaf- and coil-spring equipment, and in July 1943 it absorbed Dai Nippon Hatsujo (大日本発条), a specialist precision-spring maker working in wire springs and thin flat springs[2]. Wire and flat springs were thus added to leaf and suspension springs, broadening the range into that of a full-line spring maker. After the war, although it carried zaibatsu-affiliated capital, the company was not made a target of the zaibatsu dissolution and restarted as an independent firm in the Nippon Kokan group. It came through the post-war confusion on repair demand for railway rolling stock and lorries, and on supplying suspension springs for the revival of the motor industry. Entering the 1950s it moved to expand by taking in neighbouring firms, and in December 1953 it took a management stake in Yokohama Kiko Co., Ltd. (today a consolidated subsidiary), beginning the absorption of companies into the group. The production technology in leaf and suspension springs, and the customer base, that it built in this period became the ground on which the listing and the turn into automotive parts would rest.
Listing on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and entry into car seats
In March 1954 NHK Spring listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The listing gave it a base for raising money in the capital markets, which it used to fund production investment timed to the expansion of the motor industry. From that same year through the 1960s, passenger cars and light lorries from Toyota, Nissan, Isuzu, Mitsubishi Motors and Honda entered full volume production, and NHK Spring's deliveries of suspension springs and car seats expanded alongside them. In 1958 it established Nippatsu Precision Industry (日発精密工業) for the precision-spring business, and in the same year merged Daido Hatsujo (大同発条), a suspension-spring maker and the largest spring producer after itself, turning it into the Kawasaki plant; in 1959 it spun the sales arm for automotive replacement springs out as Nippatsu Sales (日発販売), establishing a nationwide distribution structure. 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 treats this sequence of reorganisations as the moment NHK Spring secured its footing as Japan's leading spring maker in name and in fact[3]. The prototype of its devolved way of running the business — spinning off a subsidiary or a plant for each field of activity — was also formed in these years.
In June 1961 the company built a dedicated precision-spring works at the Kawasaki plant, and at the same time raised the Toyota plant as a dedicated seat works in Toyota City, Aichi Prefecture, the home ground of Toyota Motor. That new plant was NHK Spring's decisive entry into car seats. Added to the suspension springs that had been its mainstay, being written into the supply chain for car seats — seat frames and seat cushions included — put NHK Spring at the core of the Toyota supplier structure. In December 1962 it built a dedicated seat works at Kawasaki as well, and then placed them across the country: the Ota plant in northern Kanto (1969) and the Hiroshima plant (1964). In July 1963 it set up the logistics subsidiary Nippatsu Unyu (日発運輸), and in December of the same year it formed the joint venture NHK Spring (Thailand) in Bangkok, its first overseas production site. The move into Thailand tracked the Asian expansion of Japanese electrical and motor manufacturers of the day, and it was the important first stone in what would later become a South-East Asian production network.
In December 1968 it made Nippon Shaft (日本シャフト) a subsidiary, and in May 1970 it raised the Atsugi plant in Atsugi, Kanagawa Prefecture, as a dedicated works for piping support systems, putting the industrial machinery business on a proper footing. In November 1973 it built the Shiga plant in Koka County (now Koka City), Shiga Prefecture, as a dedicated suspension-spring works, strengthening its suspension-spring capacity in the Kansai region. In December 1975 it took a management stake in the leaf-spring maker Sumihatsu (スミハツ), absorbing another neighbouring firm, and in April 1980 it bought Sanchu Ko (サンチュウ晃) and made it the Komaki plant of the machinery division. Over the forty-four years from 1936 to 1980, NHK Spring widened its field from “maker of leaf springs for railway rolling stock” to “full-line spring maker in suspension springs, seats and precision springs for the motor industry,” and completed a nationwide build-out that shadowed the production sites of the leading carmakers in the Toyota, Nissan and Honda groups. By 1968, when 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 was published, some 80 per cent of the company's output went to carmakers, and it accounted for close to 60 per cent of all spring production in Japan[4].
Notes
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
- 企業の歴史 : 明治百年 (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968)↩
References & sources
- {{i:}} (Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968), the Nippon Hatsujo entry.
- NHK Spring Co., Ltd. (annual securities reports), the corporate-history section and segment disclosures; the 2026 Medium-Term Management Plan (May 2024) and the results briefing materials for the year ended March 2026.
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