Amatsuji Steel Ball Manufacturing Co. Ltd., (Osaka, Japan) is building a new factory in Poland. Amatsuji manufactures AKS brand bearing balls.

The Polish Agency for Foreign Investments said Amatsuji will be the first Japanese company to locate in a new industrial park outside Zarow. This industrial park is unique in that it is dedicated solely to draw investment from Japanese companies.

Amatsuji is 20.5% owned by NSK Ltd., Japan's largest bearing manufacturer. NSK accounts for 44% of AKS sales.

Founded in 1920 as a bicycle bearing manufacturer, Amatsuji went public in 1933 and reoriented itself as a high-quality producer of balls for bearings and other close-tolerance applications. Those "other" applications now include machine tools, CV joints, ball point pens, fuel injectors, and other precision ball needs.

The AKS product line includes chrome steel balls (78% of sales), stainless steel balls (8%), Carbon steel balls (4%), nylon, brass and ceramic balls (5%) and machinery parts (5%).

Today, Amatsuji has two AKS factories, both in Osaka. The new plant in Poland will be its third. In addition, there are three locally-operated joint ventures: Nitto Steel Ball, AKS Hambai, and Sakai Amatsuji, all in Osaka.

With NSK, Amatsuji operates three direct joint ventures: NSK-AKS Precision Ball Indonesia in (Cibitung, Bekasi, Indonesia); NSK-AKS Precision Ball Europe Ltd. (Peterlee, U.K.); NSK-AKS Precision Ball Co. (Clarinda, Iowa). All are next door to sister NSK bearing factories, and the factory in Indonesia recently doubled its output.

Amatsuji's gross sales for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2002 were ¥ 19.9 billion (USD $129.5 million); the company employs 615 people. Sales have suffered recently as the computer disk drive industry rapidly shifts away from ball bearings to hydrodynamic or fluid-film bearings -- AKS was a primary vendor of Grade 2 and Grade 1 balls for computer disk drive motors.

The new factory in Poland was originally revealed in March 2002 when Amatsuji announced it was setting up a new subsidiary, AKS Precision Ball Poland Ltd.

Construction is set to begin during the second half of 2002, with the factory scheduled to come online by October 2003. Estimated to cost at least $11.5 million, the factory is designed to produce more than 70 million balls per month.