Expanding its Product Lineup

Matsuura’s head office and plant is in the city of Fukui, not far from the Sea of Japan. It is the birthplace of the company’s founder and first president, Matsuura Toshio. He returned to his hometown in August 1935 to start a subcontracting shop for lathe parts with the skills he had acquired during an apprenticeship in Tokyo. He was 21 years old at the time.

“Toshio was a charismatic craftsman,” says Matuura Katsutoshi, the grandson of the company’s founder and its current president. “If a machine was good, he knew it immediately. My father [Masanori] also had good intuition as the company’s leader, and was the type to charge ahead once he made a decision. In this way, our first president built the company’s manufacturing foundation, and the second president went out into the world to sell our products and build up the business. My task is to take what they built and make it even stronger.”

The head office of Matsuura Machinery, surrounded by rice paddies in Fukui Prefecture.

But Matsuura’s Lumex machine already has a rival. The Yokohama-based company Sodick, ranked thirtieth globally among machine tool makers, will begin sales of a new metal 3D printer in October 2014. Matsuura welcomes this competition, saying that it will increase the the number of users of of metal additive modeling and bring users more options. Matsuura currently has just one Lumex model, but it intends to develop a whole product lineup, including larger models, to beat out its rivals.

Matsuura is also participating in a national project that began in fiscal 2014 to develop technology for a world-class, next-generation industrial 3D printer. The aim is for the machine’s accuracy to be five times greater, and its modeling speed ten times faster, than the level of machines made overseas. If the company reaches these ambitious goals, its global presence is likely to expand further. Already President Matsuura Katsutoshi spends nearly a third of the year traveling around the world to promote sales, but he will probably be earning even more frequent flier miles in the years ahead.

Corporate Data
Company name: Matsuura Machinery Corp.
Head office: 1-1 Urushihara-cho, Fukui, Fukui Prefecture, 910-8530
Representative: Matsuura Katsutoshi
Business: Manufacture and sales of machine tools (machining centers); manufacture and sales of hybrid metal laser sintering and milling machines; sales of CAD/CAM systems
Capitalization: ¥90 million
Employees: 292
Tel: (0776) 56-8100
Website: http://www.matsuura.co.jp/english/index.html

1935 Matsuura Machinery founded. Subcontracting of lathe part machining begins.
1936 Production of lathes launched.
1940 Manufacture of lathes halted under wartime production system.
1945 Katsumi Plant destroyed in an air raid. No. 2 plant closed.
1945 End of World War II.
1957 Production and sales of milling machines begins.
1960 Reorganized as joint-stock corporation.
1961 Begins production and sales of world’s first program-controlled milling machines.
1964 Numerically controlled milling machine developed.
1974 Production of vertical machining centers begins.
1985 Ties up with US-based company National Machinery.
1988 Gains a 20% share of Elliot Machinery (Canada) and of Beaumont Machine Tools Limited (Britain).
1991 Matsuura Technical Center Europe established in Britain.
1993 Total number of machining centers shipped reaches 10,000 units.
1996 Matsuura Machinery, a European production and sales base, established in Leicestershire, Britain.
1999 Production and sales begin of linear motor machines with linear motor drive.
2001 Matsuura Europe (MEG) established in Germany.
2002 World’s first “metal laser sintering hybrid milling machine” developed jointly with Matsushita Electric.
2003 MMTS, a sales base for North America, established in Massachusetts.
2009 A 5-axis multi-tasking machining center, Cublex-63, developed.
2013 Matsuura Machinery (MMU) established in Minnesota.
2014 Participates in the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry’s project to develop a next-generation industrial 3D printer.

(Originally written in Japanese by Nagasawa Takaaki. Banner photograph of Urushisaki Yukinori, general manager in Matsuura Machinery Corporation’s Additive Manufacturing Technology Engineering Division.)