Kyocera and Kennametal Agree on Alliance in Tooling Business

Kyocera Corporation announced on Tuesday the firm agreed with Kennametal, the world secondly largest maker of cutting tools headed in USA, on an alliance to supply tooling products and supplement product lineup each other. Kyocera will complement its product lines with Kennametal’s cutting tools such as solid endmills, hole-making tools and milling products, whereas Kyocera will supply cermet tools and small tools to Kennametal.Kyocera currently provides approximately 17,000 tool items and will complement the lineup with about 1000 tool items supplied by Kennametal. Kyocera will sell Kenammetal’s tooling products under Kyocera brand through Kyocera’s distribution and vice versa. Kyocera covers Japanese and Asian markets while Kennametal holds the strong distribution in Europe and US markets.Kyocera’s consolidated sales for tooling products were approximately 40 billion yen in fiscal 2006 ended March 2007, which is one of Japanese 4 major tool makers including Mitsubishi Materials, Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal Corporation and Tungaloy Corporation. Kennametal posted consolidated sales of US$ 2.3 billion in fiscal 2005 ended June 2006, which is the secondly largest cutting tool maker in the world next to Sandvik in Sweden.In recent years merges and alliances have emerged among several Japanese tool makers, such as Mitsubishi Materials and Kobe Steel, Sumitomo Electric Hardmetal Corp and Nachi-Fujikoshi Corporation, Tungaloy Corp and OSG Corporation. The movement of other tool makers has been watched with possibility of an alliance with overseas tool makers.