Early Period
In October 1916, at the age of just 21, Eimatsu Kotone founded
Kotone Seisakusho,a company manufacturing storage tanks for
chemicals and medicines and chemical engineering equipment.
This is the older root of the present Nippon Pneumatic Manufacturing
Co., Ltd. Through the period between the first and second world
wars, Kotone Seisakusho steadily cultivated a core of technical
expertise and gradually developed its business as a small-scale
company.
Meanwhile, 1923 saw the founding of the other root of our company,
Nippon Pneumatic Kogyosho, a manufacturer of air tools. The
company was reorganized as a joint-stock corporation in 1938,
and in 1942 the owners persuaded Eimatsu Kotone to serve as
its president.
The two companies were amalgamated in 1945 under the name Nippon
Pneumatic Manufacturing Co. , Ltd. During the next decade, while
the business operations remained based on the production of
chemical tanks and air tools, NPK focused much of its energy
on research and development programs to explore various other
potentials.
Period of Expansion
From the mid-1950s, the Japanese economy moved on from the
Korean War procurement boom into two decades of rapid general
growth. As various industries converted to mass production,
a serious manpower shortage emerged, leading to strong demand
for automation systems. Beginning with machinery for producing
synthetic films, NPK developed various kinds of equipment to
match particular industrial needs. Production equipment was
a mainstay of the company's operations until about 1970.
During that period, NPK developed the product that would be
crucial to the development of our current
Construction Equipment Division: the world痴 first large air
hammer, marketed as the IPH series. Widely used for major projects
such as the Expo ・0 site in Osaka, the IPH series established
NPK as a leader in the field.
The pharmaceutical industry had traditionally used milling techniques
to pulverize raw materials, with the disadvantage that the heat
generated by grinding tends to degrade the medicinal properties.
Realizing that the use of compressed air for pulverization could
revolutionize the industry, NPK embarked on a ten-year intensive
R&D program. The result was the Ultrasonic Jet Pulverizer,
capable of using fast-moving compressed air to produce powders
as fine as one micron. This was the start of our Chemical Engineering
Division.
Period of Maturity
In 1972, the year the government embarked on an ambitious
plan to 途emodel the Japanese archipelago", NPK released
the newly developed HPH large hydraulic hammer. Providing substantially
higher levels of efficiency and laborsaving technology for roadbuilding
and other construction projects, this product was awarded the
Special Invention Prize by the Japan Institute of Invention
and Innovation.
A few years later the Chemical Engineering Division succeeded
in developing a machine to separate micron-grade powders according
to particle size. The high-precision powder dispersion separator
was recognized with Outstanding Product Awards from the Society
of Chemical Engineers, Japan and the Japan Management Association.
In addition to innovative products that would become the keystones
of our Construction Equipment and Chemical Engineering Divisions,
this period brought another important step in the history of
NPK: expansion into overseas markets.
Export sales of our pneumatic hammers and other air tools had
long been made indirectly through trading companies. In 1978
we opened our first sales base outside Japan, a subsidiary company
in the Netherlands. Then in 1985 we established a US sales subsidiary.
NPK has by now become well established in key markets in Europe
and North America, but we nevertheless remember our early steps
into the international arena as a challenging process.
Period of Innovation
Looking back over our history from the early period to the present,
although the key business areas have changed over the course
of the various eras, there is a strong thread of consistency
that has been passed down from our founder through successive
leaders to our current staff. It is this: NPK is a company based
on monozukuri (translatable as making, fabricating, crafting)
and on the development of unique product lines that match customer
needs and also serve society as a whole. As we move forward
in our operations serving the construction, pneumatic and chemical
industries, we at NPK are determined to maintain that precious
legacy, through excellence in the crafting, improvement and
servicing of products for our customers around the world.
Today, in the American construction equipment market where competitors
from around the world are pushing in fiercely, the sales staff
at our US subsidiary are battling to build the NPK market share.
In Europe there are more than 100 employees at our Czech production
plant, while our sales and service subsidiary in the promising
Middle East region has both local staff and employees seconded
from Japan. We have also dispatched veteran engineers to our
Shanghai production subsidiary to assist in training younger
Chinese machine operators.
NPK has become a global company on a scale our predecessors
would have found difficult to imagine.
Along with our traditions, we place the highest value on the
contributions that can be made by each individual
in our global network.