Renaming to Sankyu Unyu Kiko and listing on the exchange (1959)

Turning the business into machinery and logistics as a matched pair

The paired decisions of a new name and a listing meant more than changing the sign over the door or raising money. Keeping as its foundation the contract labour stationed inside one customer’s plant, the company formally installed alongside it a technical field, kiko, and through listing obtained the financial base to keep making large capital investments. In doing so Sankyu Unyu Kiko can be seen to have shifted its position — from a company that passively followed its customers’ production plans to one that invests ahead of them and builds a technical advantage of its own.

That shift appears to have been the foundation for what came later: the change of name back to plain Sankyu in 1980, the expansion of overseas subsidiaries beginning with Malaysia and Brazil, and the merger with Okazaki Kogyo in 1990. That a change of leadership forced by the unforeseen death of the second president became the occasion for reorganizing a company standing on the single leg of in-plant handling into a composite engineering-and-logistics business is what shows the long reach of this decision.