1-1-2 Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku
Company Perspectives:
Group Vision: For almost a century, Maruha has delivered the seafood bounties of the world's oceans to customers' dining tables through al l stages of the business from fisheries and aquaculture to processing , storage, logistics, and sales.
In addition to fulfilling customer needs through high-quality foodstu ffs, materials, and services, our vision is to provide the innovation of the Maruha Group as well as "value" to a variety of dining settin gs.
Maruha Group Inc. is Japan's leading importer and processor of seafoo ds, and a leading producer and processor of frozen, canned, fresh, an d convenience foods. Maruha's operations span the full range of seafo od production, from managing its own fishing fleet, to extensive glob al fish purchasing and processing operations, cold-storage facilities , food production and packaging, and distribution, including restaura nt operations. Formed in the late 19th century, Maruha developed into one of Japan's major whaling companies, under its former name of Tai yo Gyogyo KK (Taiyo Fishery Co.), and also built up one of the countr y's largest fleets of trawlers. The worldwide moratorium on whaling f orced the company to exit that industry, and the company has responde d to increasing conservation pressures on the global fishing industry by reducing its own fishing fleet and relying instead on an internat ional network of supply partnerships. Maruha also has established som e 60 international subsidiaries, including in the United States, Thai land, China, Spain, Chile, New Zealand, Indonesia, Mozambique, and Ma dagascar. The company also operates nearly 110 subsidiaries in Japan. In addition to seafoods, Maruha produces meat and poultry products, pet foods, and feed. The company ended a longstanding presence in the sugar industry through the sale of its stake in Ensuiko Sugar Refini ng Co. in 2005. This followed the company's move to restructure itsel f as a holding company in 2004, part of a wider reorganization and co nsolidation of its operations. The company is listed on the Tokyo Sto ck Exchange. Yuji Igarashi is company president and CEO.
Fishmonger in the 19th Century
Maruha's origins reach back to the late 19th century, when Ikujiro Na kabe began a business buying fish from local fishermen and delivering the product to wholesalers in Osaka. The company, originally known a s Tosa Hogei, remained a small family-owned business into the 20th ce ntury. Yet the importance of fish to the Japanese diet--the country w as to distinguish itself as the world's single largest market for fis h--encouraged the company's growth. By 1904, Nakabe had moved his com pany to Shimonoseki, in the Yamaguchi Prefecture.
The move precipitated the Nakabe family's entry into the whaling indu stry. Shimonoseki had by then been a center of Japanese whaling for m ore than a century, and Nakabe's company rapidly established itself a mong the pioneers of modern whaling methods. The launch of Japanese w haling in Antarctica provided a new opportunity for the company, whic h went public in 1924 as KK Hayashikane Shoten. By 1926, the company had launched its own fleet of whaling vessels in Antarctica.
The group's whaling operations led it to develop an expanded range of businesses, including its own fishing fleet and fish processing busi nesses. The company also added diversified activities such as restaur ant operation, shipbuilding, transport, and even the operation of its own hospitals. In 1943, the company changed its name to recognize it s expanded focus, becoming Nishi Taiyo Gyogyo Tosei KK. Two years lat er, however, at the end of World War II, the company shortened its na me to Taiyo Gyogyo KK (Taiyo Fishery Co.). Following the war, the com pany moved its headquarters to Tokyo in 1949. In that year, the compa ny also became involved in Japanese baseball, forming its own profess ional baseball team, the Taiyo Whalers (later changed to the Yokohama Bay Stars).
World War II, however, had had drastic consequences for the company. With much of its domestic operations damaged during the war, the comp any lost nearly all of its assets and businesses overseas as well. Fo rced to rebuild, Taiyo developed a two-pronged business focus. The co mpany reentered whaling and fishing, boosting its operations with the 1955 acquisition of Nippon Kinkai Hogei, formed in a merger between three prominent Japanese whalers just a year earlier. The company als o contributed to the rebuilding of Japan's whaling fleet, once again targeting the Antarctic region. By the beginning of the 1960s, Taiyo was one of the country's leading whalers, with its own fleet hunting whales in the Antarctic, supported by its own factory ship.
During this period, as well, Taiyo began rebuilding its overseas fish ing fleet. By 1951, the company had returned to salmon fishing and pr ocessing operations, including in the Alaskan region. The company bec ame one of the first to enter the West African fishing market, when t he region was opened for trawling in 1958.
Yet Taiyo also had begun to develop its food production arm, emerging as one of Japan's longtime leading seafood importers, producers, and processors. In 1963, the company launched its own aquaculture busine ss. By 1960, Taiyo also had begun to expand its production beyond sea food and marine products into other food areas, as well as into the p roduction of pet foods and feeds (which served as a means of making u se of the waste byproducts of its seafood processing operations) and livestock production. In 1964, the company made another significant e xtension of its operations when it acquired a stake in Ensuiko Sugar Refining Co. That company grew into one of Japan's top-five sugar pro ducers.
Leading Seafoods Group in the New Century
Conservationist pressures began building on a global scale in the lat e 1960s and early 1970s. The voracious Japanese appetite for whale me at had brought on a drastic reduction in the world's whale population s. Japanese aggressive, industrialized fishing methods also were call ed into question as fish stocks began to dwindle around the world. A massive lobbying effort to ban whaling grew during the 1970s. At the same time, the international community began placing restrictions on international fishing operations, leading to the adoption of 200-mile protection zones by many countries in an effort to protect their loc al fishing industries from large-scale international fishing companie s.
The prospect of a whaling ban led Taiyo to merge its whaling operatio ns with those two other prominent Japanese whalers, Nihon Suisan and Kyukyuo Hogei, in 1976, forming Nihon Kyodo Hogei. At the height of t he Japanese whaling industry in the 1960s, the three companies had op erated a combined fleet of more than 140 vessels, including nearly 90 whaling ships. The new company, however, started operations with a f ar reduced fleet of just 20 whaling ships and three factory ships. Du ring the company's first post-merger whaling campaign, the company se nt out 18 whaling ships. By the 1977 whaling season, however, the com pany fielded just four whalers. In support of the whaling fleet, thou gh, Taiyo founded a new subsidiary, Nihon Hogei, which began processi ng and distributing whale meat to the Japanese market. By 1987, howev er, Taiyo had exited the whaling industry altogether, transferring th e remains of Nihon Hogei to a new company, Kyodo Senpaku.
Continued restrictions also had forced the company to slim down its f ishing fleet. Instead, during the 1980s and 1990s, the company began building up a network of international partnerships and local affilia tes. By the mid-2000s, the company had developed joint ventures in so me 15 countries. An early example was the creation of Solomon Taiyo L td. (STL) in a joint venture with the government of the Solomon Islan ds in 1973. Under that agreement, Taiyo supplied the fishing vessels and equipment, as well as the construction of a processing and canner y facility, in exchange for the right to fish off of the Solomon Isla nds waters, as well as a 75 percent stake in STL. The venture was a s uccess, and STL rapidly became the Solomon Islands' largest employer.
Taiyo looked for other international expansion opportunities into the 1990s. In 1990, for example, the company acquired control of Kingfis her Holdings Limited in Thailand. That company had been formed in 197 2 as SAFCOL Thailand, the first tuna processor in the country. SAFCOL later developed a wider line of frozen, canned, and other value-adde d seafood products, with an emphasis on the export market, before cha nging its name to Kingfisher in 1989.
Other investments brought Taiyo to the United States, where it acquir ed control of Trans-Ocean Products, based in Bellingham, Washington. That company was one of the first in the United States to begin produ cing and marketing surimi to the U.S. market.
Taiyo changed its name to Maruha Corporation, and developed a new log o, in an effort to shake off its past as a whaling company and to emp hasize its new focus as a major seafood importer and processor. By th e early 1990s, fishing accounted for just 10 percent of the company's sales, while the sale of fish and shellfish had become its core busi ness, representing more than 70 percent of its revenues. The company also had developed a strong aquaculture business, with 20 fish farms in operation in Japan.
Maruha sought an entry into the Chinese market in the early 1990s as well. This led the company to form a joint venture, Zhousan Industria l Company Ltd., in 1994. The Zhousan company, held at 49 percent by M aruha, then took over its partner's original fishery business, Zhousa n No. 2 Fishery Corporation, which had been founded in 1978.
Maruha launched a restructuring effort at the end of the 1990s and in to the 2000s. As part of that process, the company began selling its stake in Ensuiko Sugar Refining, which had been hit by declining suga r consumption in Japan. That process was completed in 2005, when Maru ha sold its remaining 24 percent stake to Mitsubishi, which also cont rolled the number two sugar producer in Japan, Dai-Nippon Meiji Sugar Co. In 2001, the company spun off its pet food business into a new c ompany, Maruha Pet Food Co. Ltd., as part of a management buyout.
Maruha's restructuring continued into 2002. The company sold off its share of the Yokohama Bay Stars baseball team that year. Also in 2002 , the company disposed of its trawling fleet, and spun off its cold-s torage business into a new company. On a positive note, the company's restaurant business had been growing strongly, and in 2002 the compa ny announced its intention to triple its number of restaurants. A ste p in that direction came in 2003 when the company opened its new Oreg on Bar & Grill in Tokyo in a partnership with the Oregon state go vernment.
Maruha's restructuring effort was completed, in large part, in 2004, capped by its own reorganization as a holding company, Maruha Group I nc., that year. The newly formed company then began taking steps to e xert tighter control over its somewhat loosely linked federation of m ore than 170 subsidiaries worldwide. Maruha also formed new partnersh ips, such as a link with Osaka Uoichiba Co. in 2003, and a frozen foo ds development partnership with Japan Tobacco at the end of 2004. Mar uha Group looked forward to another century as a leading name in the Japanese seafood industry.
Principal Subsidiaries: Alyeska Seafoods Inc (U.S.A.); Bengal Fisheries Ltd. (Bangladesh); Cixi Yongching Frozen Foods Co., Ltd. (C hina); Cixi Young-shin Foods Co., Ltd. (China); Dalian Riken Maruha F oodstuff Co., Ltd. (China); Entreposto Frigorifico de Pesca de Mocamb ique, Ltda.; Gill & Duffus S.A. (Switzerland); Kingfisher Holding s Limited (Thailand); Maruha (N.Z.) Corporation Ltd. (New Zealand); M aruha (Shanghai) Trading Corporation (China); Maruha Capital Investme nt, Inc. (U.S.A.); P.T. Nusantara Fishery (Indonesia); Raoping Youngl ian Foodstuffs Factory Co., Ltd. (China); Sociedad Pesquera Taiyo Chi le Ltda.; Société Malgache de Pêcherie (Madagasca r); Société Malgache de Pecherie du Boina (Madagascar); Southeast Asian Packaging & Canning Ltd. (Thailand); Supreme Ala ska Seafoods Inc. (U.S.A.); Taiyo (U.K.) Ltd.; Taiyo (U.S.A.) Inc.; T rans Ocean Products Inc. (U.S.A.); TransEurope Seafood Sales B.V. (Ne therlands); Viver-Atun Cartagena, S.A. (Spain); Westward Seafoods Inc . (U.S.A.); Zhoushan Industrial Co., Ltd. (China).
Principal Competitors: Antarktika Fishing Co.; Mar Fishing Com pany Inc.; ENACA; Kyokuyo Company Ltd.; Unilever Deutschland GmbH; Ma vesa S.A.; Mukorob Fishing Proprietary Ltd.; Hanwa Company Ltd.; Nich iro Corporation.
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