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November 19, 2019

Beyond the Ri’ichi

by Hiromi Saita, Senior Staff, International Management Office, Satake Corporation, Japan

Part 1: From local town in Japan, to the world
Since its foundation in 1896, Satake’s 123 years of history have been an endless challenge with technological breakthroughs and regional boundaries. Initially started as a short grain rice milling machine manufacturer in Japan, Satake’s products now range from rice milling machinery, flour milling machinery, biomass gasification systems and microbial analysers for ballast water, to packaged rice for the food industry.
 

Satake currently serves its customer with 29 offices in 13 countries outside of Japan, and supply products and services to over 150 countries worldwide, establishing and extending its global production system and service network.
 
We would like to go back in time and explore how Satake expanded its application of the short grain rice milling machine beyond the realms of imagination to all other products.

Born in Saijo

In 1863, Ri’ichi Satake was born in a small town of Higashi-Hiroshima city, Hiroshima prefecture, Japan, as the first son of the Satake family who made their living as farmers for generations. It was in 1878, at age of fifteen, during the laborious work of manual rice milling that the first new ideas started to flash through Mr Satake’s mind on how to improve the rice milling process.

However, as he was about to start trials on a new type of rice milling machine, he was appointed as a person in charge of water management of the largest lake in Hiroshima Prefecture. In 1893, immediately after completing this work, he was again assigned as a commander of line construction for the railway between Mihara city and Hiroshima city, both in the prefecture.

The railroad later became one of the main lines in Western Japan, the Sanyo line. Furthermore, he was then chosen for the post of line construction between Kyoto city and Nara city.

It was 1895, he was finally able to start the development of the rice milling machine. In 1896, Riichi had realised his dream of creating a power-driven milling machine - the first of its kind in Japan.

He not only designed it but crafted all parts by himself in a small shack. Its performance was 20 times more efficient than that of man-powered alternatives and impressed everyone who saw the demonstration; he immediately sold three of them.

However, not completely satisfied with its tall bulky heavy weight body (at near 370kg in total), he was led to recalling all machines he had already delivered to customers and begin the addition of further improvements.

The improved version became the famous four-linked type motor power-driven milling machine, twice the capacity but half the size of the first machine. The sales of this revolutionarily efficient rice milling machine expanded so rapidly that soon the tiny manufacturing facility became one of the largest in the area, hiring over 200 employees. This is the foundation of the current Satake Corporation.


Read more HERE.
 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.


For additional daily news from milling around the world: global-milling.com

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