Type Public KK Industry Electronics Founder Masao Horiba Number of employees 5,787 | Traded as TYO: 6856 Headquarters Japan Founded 26 January 1953 | |
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Key people Atsushi Horiba
(Chairman of the Board, President and CEO) Products Automotive emission measurement & test systems
Environmental measuring instruments
Scientific & medical analytical equipment
Semiconductor-industry measuring equipment Revenue US$ 1.31 billion (FY 2013)
(¥ 138.13 billion) (FY 2013) CEO Atsushi Horiba (Jan 1992–) Stock price 6856 (TYO) JP¥ 6,440 -10.00 (-0.16%)14 Mar, 3:00 PM GMT+9 - Disclaimer Subsidiaries Horiba Medical, MIRA Ltd., SRH Systems | ||
Horiba, Ltd. (堀場製作所, Kabushiki-gaisha Horiba Seisaku-sho) is a Japanese manufacturer of precision instruments for measurement and analysis. They make instruments that measure and analyze automobile exhaust gas (80% share of the world market), and environmental, medical and scientific applications.
Horiba is one of the top 25 analytical and life sciences instrumentation companies in the world.
Development of the company
Horiba was founded in 1945 by Masao Horiba, who graduated in nuclear physics from Kyoto University and in the early 1950s started mass-production of pH meters. The present company was registered in 1953. From 1959 until 2002, Hitachi was a principal shareholder, and the two companies retain close connections.
In 1972, the company established subsidiaries in America and Europe. In 1996-7, Horiba acquired two French companies: the specialist blood cell counter maker ABX SA (currently called Horiba ABX SAS) in 1996, and optical equipment maker Instruments SA (currently Horiba Jobin Yvon SAS) in 1997.
In 2005, Horiba acquired German company Schenck Development Test Systems (including Schenck Pegasus), expanding the automotive market product range to include engine and driveline testing tools, including brake testing and wind-tunnel balances, and the Interautomation Group of Ontario, Canada, with its real-time pre-emptive kernel Linux-based ADACS data acquisition and control software suite.
Horiba's diversification, and establishing of overseas subsidiaries, decoupled Horiba from the stagnant Japanese industrial market, and Japanese domestic sales dropped from 62% of total sales in 1995 to 35% in 2008. The Horiba group now consists of about 42 companies, spread over about 15 countries.