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Japan
Daido Steel / Daido Electronics
Anisotropic hot-deformed, or die-upset, NdFeB magnets made from melt-spun rapidly quenched powder and consolidated by hot pressing and hot plastic deformation, marketed as NEOQUENCH-DR. Daido describes the resulting grain structure as roughly one tenth the size of a sintered magnet's, which is the basis of its dysprosium- and terbium-free heat resistance. It also makes isotropic bonded NdFeB and isotropic bonded SmFeN magnets. End markets are hybrid and electric traction motors, steering, sensors and actuators, plus industrial robots, semiconductor equipment and medical devices.
At a glance
- Founded
- 1916 — Daido Steel gives its founding as 19 August 1916 and its incorporation as 1 February 1950. The magnet subsidiary, Daido Electronics, was established in January 1990 and began production in February 1991, which is arguably the more meaningful date for a magnet reference.
- Headquarters
- Daido Steel: Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. Daido Electronics: Nakatsugawa, Gifu, Japan.
- Ownership
- Daido Steel is listed on the Tokyo and Nagoya exchanges under code 5471. Daido Electronics is a wholly owned subsidiary.
- Revenue
- JPY 578.1 billion
Reported, fiscal year ended 31 March 2026.
Magnet-only revenue is not broken out. The nearest segment, Functional Materials and Magnetic Materials, reported JPY 199.8 billion for the same year, but it also carries stainless, titanium, electronic materials and welding consumables and is not a magnet figure. The only magnet-specific money figure Daido publishes is a forward target of JPY 50 billion in fiscal 2030.
Source
Capacity
Each date below links to the document the figure came from. A capacity figure with no source is not on this page.
| What | Figure | Status | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hot-deformed anisotropic NdFeB magnets — current operating capacity or output | not published | Operating | Sep 2026 |
| Hot-deformed magnets for EV and hybrid drive motors, new line at Daido Electronics Plant 3, Nakatsugawa — Phase 1 | 45 t/month by fiscal 2027; the line launched in April 2026 | Announced | Jun 2026 |
| Hot-deformed magnets for EV and hybrid drive motors — Phase 2 | 90 t/month by fiscal 2028 | Announced | Jul 2025 |
| Total magnet capital program and sales target | approximately JPY 5 billion of capital investment through fiscal 2030, and a fiscal 2030 magnet business sales target of JPY 50 billion | Announced | Jun 2026 |
| Magnet sites: Nakatsugawa, Gifu (hot-deformed anisotropic NdFeB, bonded NdFeB, bonded SmFeN); Ayutthaya, Thailand (bonded and hot-deformed NdFeB); Foshan, Guangdong, China (bonded NdFeB) | no per-site tonnages published | Operating | Sep 2026 |
Narrative
Daido Steel is a Nagoya specialty steel maker listed under code 5471; its wholly owned subsidiary Daido Electronics, at Nakatsugawa in Gifu, makes the group's rare earth magnets. Daido Electronics' published product range is anisotropic hot-deformed NdFeB, isotropic bonded NdFeB and isotropic bonded SmFeN; no sintered NdFeB line is publicly documented, which makes Daido the one major automotive magnet supplier in this atlas working by the hot-deformed route rather than the sintered one. The die-upset process builds nanoscale grains, which Daido states delivers heat resistance without dysprosium or terbium. Honda adopted the resulting magnet in the 2016 Freed hybrid and the 2018 Insight. Daido has announced about JPY 5 billion of magnet investment through fiscal 2030.
Where public sources disagree
- Drive-motor magnet capacity does not reconcile between two reputable Japanese trade dailies. One reports approximately 1,000 t/yr by 2027 on roughly JPY 3 billion of capital spending; the other reports 45 t/month, about 540 t/yr, by fiscal 2027 and 90 t/month by fiscal 2028 on a JPY 5 billion program. The scopes may differ, or the plan may have been revised. No Daido document reconciles them.
- A 2030 target of about 150 tons is reported without stating whether it is monthly or annual.
- No published figure exists for Daido Electronics' current hot-deformed capacity or output. Every tonnage on the public record is a future target.
- Daido Electronics' published product range contains no sintered magnet, and its own FAQ states it makes no sintered, ferrite or alnico magnets. Daido Steel's English research page refers to a comparison with 'our sintered magnets', which may be a translation artifact; the claim that Daido makes no sintered magnets at all rests on the subsidiary's own product disclosures.
- A July 2025 Japanese report says Daido Electronics is considering US production. The article body could not be retrieved, so nothing beyond the fact of consideration is supported.
Sources
- FY2026/3 consolidated results summary, IFRS (Japanese) — Daido Steel Co., Ltd. (2026-05-15)
- Investor briefing 2026 — magnet business, capital program, fiscal 2030 sales target — Daido Steel Co., Ltd. (2026-06-12)
- World's first hybrid motor magnet completely free of heavy rare earths, adopted in the Honda Freed — Daido Steel Co., Ltd. (2016-07-12)
- Daido Electronics site list and products by site (Japanese) — Daido Electronics Co., Ltd. (accessed 2026-09-18)
- Daido strengthens high-performance magnets: 45 t/month by FY2027, 90 t/month by FY2028 (Japanese) — Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun / Newswitch (2025-07-22)
- Daido Electronics to double drive-motor magnet capacity to about 1,000 t/year (Japanese) — Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun (2024-08-29)
How this page is sourced
Everything here comes from public sources — company filings, annual reports, exchange announcements, government releases and trade press. Every figure is linked to the document it came from and carries the date that document was published, because a capacity number without a date is not a fact, it is a rumor with a decimal point.
What is deliberately absent: material nonpublic information. I have spent more than two decades in this industry and a good deal of what I know about these companies I learned under NDA. Those obligations do not expire and they do not bend for a website. Nothing I have been told in confidence appears here in any form, and nothing on this page — or missing from it — should be read as a signal about what I know privately. I hold NDAs absolutely. It is the reason clients tell me things.
Judgment is the other thing left out on purpose. This page reports what has been published and who published it. Whether a target is credible, whether a ramp will hold, whether a capacity figure survives contact with the plant behind it — that is the work I do for clients, and it does not belong in a free reference page.
Where public sources disagree, I say so rather than picking a winner. Where a figure has not been published, the field says so rather than carrying an estimate. An empty field is information too.
Public filings tell you what a company has said. Whether it holds up is a different question, and the one I get hired to answer.
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