Ebara - Company History

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Financial history 1953–2025 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1912
Founder Hatakeyama Issei
Founding location 東京都品川区
Core business at founding Design and manufacture of centrifugal pumps
Listed 1949
President Hosoda Shugo President since 2025 (age 60, as of 2026)
Current priority Share growth · Selection and focus Taking the leading market share in dry vacuum pumps, CMP tools and packaging plating
Founding
In November 1912 Hatakeyama Issei opened the Inokuchi-shiki Kikai Jimusho at Nippori in Tokyo. It was an office set up to turn into working machines the world's first theory of the centrifugal pump, published in 1905 by Inokuchi Ariya, a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, with Inokuchi as its principal and Hatakeyama as its director. Hatakeyama had watched Kunitomo Iron Works, which had taken on the practical application of the theory before him, run aground at the end of the Meiji era, and so he kept design, manufacture and sales together in his own hands rather than splitting them off. In May 1920 he moved the works to Shinagawa-cho in Ebara-gun and incorporated Ebara Corporation, taking the company name from the place it had moved to. By the early Showa years the company accounted for just over 60 per cent of domestic pump output, pushing the imports back.
The Decision
The technology for handling fluids never moved; what moved was the market it was aimed at. In the electronics business begun in 1985 the company turned the technology of pumping liquid towards vacuum equipment that draws off gas, and in July 1987 it built a precision machinery plant at Fujisawa and entered vacuum equipment for semiconductors. The medium-term plan ACT'95, running from the 1991 financial year, raised the banner of moving beyond pumps and made the environment a second pillar; with municipal demand booming under the dioxin regulations, Ebara won orders for gasification melting furnaces on a thin track record, and delays to construction sank the year to March 2003 to a net loss of $245.9M (¥29bn). Learning from that, in 2010 it brought Mitsubishi Corporation and JGC into the capital of its water subsidiary and let go of the contracting model. The engineering in both cases was the fluid technology of the founding business; what divided success from failure was who was buying. The difference between semiconductor makers that keep investing and municipalities whose prices are set at tender came through directly as the difference in margin.
Today
The largest earner is not the pump business the company was founded on but the semiconductor business it started as a distant field. Of revenue of $6.4B (¥958bn) in the year to December 2025, precision and electronics accounted for $2.3B (¥342bn), 36 per cent of the whole; its segment profit of $385.6M (¥58bn) was close to half of the $779.2M (¥117bn) earned by the five businesses together. Inside it are the dry vacuum pumps entered in 1987, the CMP tools taken on at a customer's request in 1992, and plating equipment for packaging. In January 2023 the company reorganised itself from a product-based structure into five companies aligned with the markets they face, placing precision and electronics, and building and industrial, among the growth businesses. President Hosoda Shugo has set taking the leading market share in those three products as the next target of the new plan, E-Plan 2028.
Competition
The opponents have been swapped out as the business has been shifted. In pre-war pumps Ebara shared the domestic field with Hitachi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, steadied by public-sector demand. Once it moved into semiconductor equipment the opponents were of another order of size. Applied Materials of the United States, which stands beside it in CMP tools, is the company with which Ebara held some 90 per cent of the world market between them as of 2004. Among Japanese firms, Tokyo Electron, which once agreed to combine with that same Applied Materials, and SCREEN, which holds first place in the world in cleaning equipment, have built their scale in other process steps and are not opponents Ebara meets head-on. What Ebara competes in narrows to three things — dry vacuum pumps, CMP and packaging plating — and it has declared for itself that it will take the leading market share in every one of them.

Timeline

1912–1968From a pump theory to a domestic pump industry

  1. 1905Inokuchi Ariya publishes his theory of the centrifugal pump
  2. 1912Hatakeyama Issei founds the Inokuchi-shiki Kikai Jimusho at Nippori
  3. 1920Ebara Corporation incorporated with capital of ¥3 million
  4. 1938Haneda plant built; head office and works move from Shinagawa
  5. 1945War damage forces production from Haneda to the Kawasaki plant
  6. 1949Listed on the First Sections of the Tokyo and Osaka exchanges
  7. 1956Ebara Infilco established for water treatment equipment
  8. 1964First post-war overseas office opens in Bangkok; Ebara Service set up
  9. 1965Fujisawa plant brings volume production of standard pumps to Japan
  10. 1968Listed on the Sapporo Stock Exchange

1969–2005Global diversification, and the move into vacuum equipment for semiconductors

  1. 1975Ebara Industrias Mecanicas in Brazil, the first overseas plant
  2. 1975Sodegaura plant built; compressors and turbines begin
  3. 1979PT. Ebara Indonesia established
  4. 1981Ebara International Corporation established in the United States
  5. 1986Fujimura Hiroyuki becomes president
  6. 1987Precision machinery plant at Fujisawa starts semiconductor vacuum equipment
  7. 1989Ebara Italia established for pressed stainless standard pumps
  8. 1992Qingdao Ebara Environmental Equipment established in China
  9. 1994Ebara Infilco absorbed; water treatment moves into the parent
  10. 2000Elliott Company of the United States becomes a wholly owned subsidiary
  11. 2001Ebara Kyushu starts CMP tool production in Kumamoto
  12. 2003Waste plant delays bring a net loss of $245.9M (¥29bn)
  13. 2005Three-company structure: fluid machinery, environmental, precision and electronics

2006–2020The scandals of the 2000s, and the overhaul of governance

  1. 2007Embezzlement by a vice-president; the president resigns
  2. 2007Old head office and Haneda plant closed and sold to Yamato Transport
  3. 2008Gain on sale of fixed assets of $614.8M (¥72bn) booked
  4. 2009Water treatment consolidated into Ebara Engineering Service
  5. 2010Futtsu plant built; Haneda's manufacturing moves there
  6. 2010Mitsubishi Corporation and JGC join the water company as equal partners
  7. 2011Asbestos found on the Haneda site; Yamato Transport sues
  8. 2013Maeda Toichi becomes president
  9. 2015Converts to a company with a nominating committee
  10. 2019Supreme Court closes the asbestos case against Ebara

Founding Story

1912–1968From a pump theory to a domestic pump industry

Ebara spent its first half-century turning one professor's equation into a national industry. From a workshop at Nippori that designed, built and sold its own pumps, it grew into the maker of more than sixty per cent of Japan's pump output, moved its head office and works to Haneda, survived the bombing of that plant, and listed in 1949. Sales of $7.5M (¥3bn) in 1953 had reached $83.1M (¥30bn) by 1968, by which time water treatment, after-sales service and volume-produced standard pumps had all been added alongside the pump business itself.

Inokuchi's centrifugal pump theory, and the business built out of it

Ebara Corporation's origins lie in the world's first theory of the centrifugal pump, published in 1905 by Inokuchi Ariya (井口在屋), a professor at Tokyo Imperial University[1]. Kunitomo Iron Works (国友鉄工所) was founded to put that research to practical use, and Inokuchi went on building prototype centrifugal pumps of his own design there; but the works could not sustain itself, closed at the end of the Meiji era, and the attempt to turn the theory into a business failed[2]. Hatakeyama Issei (畠山一清), who had studied under Inokuchi at Kunitomo, believed in the future of the centrifugal pump and in 1912 founded the Inokuchi-shiki Kikai Jimusho (ゐのくち式機械事務所, the Inokuchi-type Machinery Office), setting up at Nippori in Tokyo an organisation that carried out design, manufacture and sales as one[3]. Japan's pump market at the time was dominated by imports; among domestic products, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Hitachi were the competition. Having watched at close quarters why Kunitomo Iron Works had failed at the point where basic university research has to become a business, Hatakeyama put his effort into building the practical side of the organisation. The prototype of a management style advanced for its day — one person bridging the theory and the working machine — takes its shape here.

Hatakeyama entered the pump performance trials (tenders) run by the City of Tokyo, and the quality that came of integrated production started the flow by which domestic pumps drove out imports. In 1919 the company delivered fifteen centrifugal pumps in all to the pumping station at Tawaramachi in Asakusa and to the Mikawashima sewage treatment plant[4]; orders for pumps of record size for the day, they secured the company's footing in engineering and in business alike. In 1920 the head office and works moved to Shinagawa-cho in Ebara-gun, Tokyo Prefecture[5], and Ebara Corporation was incorporated with capital of ¥3 million[6]. The name Ebara comes from the place it had moved to[7]. Through the pre-war Showa years Ebara held a share of just over 60 per cent of domestic pump output[8], taking its place beside Hitachi and Mitsubishi among the leading Japanese makers. That the industry-academia link had taken seven years to reach commercialisation was carried forward into the engineering-minded culture of later years. The way of working Hatakeyama had inherited as Inokuchi's pupil — handling both the theory and the machine — was handed down for decades as the prototype of Ebara's management style. It survives as the founding spirit heat and sincerity (熱と誠)[9], carried on into the training of Ebara's employees in later years.

Post-war recovery, and the widening into water treatment and service

In 1938 the company built the Haneda plant at Haneda in Kamata ward, Tokyo, moving both the head office and the works there from Shinagawa[10]. For some seventy years, until it closed in 2007, the Haneda plant served as Ebara's head-office works, building pumps several metres in diameter and plant equipment. The Kawasaki plant was added in 1941 and wartime production was in place[11], but in 1945 war damage forced an emergency transfer of production from Haneda to Kawasaki[12]. In May 1949 the company listed on the First Sections of the Tokyo and Osaka stock exchanges, joining the capital market of the recovery years. Recovering from the bombing and broadening the capital base through listing together laid an important foundation for the expansion that was to come. The basis for widening out from a pre-war pump specialist into a post-war general machinery maker was put in place around this time.

In 1955 the main weight of production returned to the Haneda plant[13], and the following year, in 1956, Ebara Infilco Co. was established to make and sell water treatment equipment[14]. It was the starting point of the water business — the beginning of a long line that would run through the absorption merger of 1994 and the founding of Swing in 2009[15]. In 1964 the company opened its first post-war overseas office, in Bangkok[16], and in the same year set up Ebara Service to organise the after-sales business[17]. In 1965 the Fujisawa plant was built, establishing volume production of standard pumps for the first time in Japan[18]. In 1968 Ebara listed on the Sapporo Stock Exchange as well[19], entering a period of multiple listings that took in the regional markets. The seeds of three businesses — the founding pump line, water treatment and service — were all in the ground together and beginning to grow. Establishing volume production of standard pumps built the base for the product range that would carry the global expansion of later years.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  2. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  3. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  4. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  5. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  6. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  7. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  8. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha, 1968↩
  9. Japan Innovation Review (JBpress), “The founding spirit and reason for being of Ebara Corporation”, 2022↩
  10. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  11. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  12. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  13. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  14. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  15. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  16. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  17. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  18. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩
  19. Ebara Corporation, securities report for the 161st term (FY December 2025), corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Corporate Histories: A Century of Meiji, Keizai Shunju-sha (1968), the Ebara Corporation entry.

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