Shin-Etsu Chemical

Sintered NdFeB, marketed as the N Series, and samarium-cobalt magnets, together with rare-earth oxides and compounds and magnet application products such as voice coil motors. End markets include EV and fuel-cell traction motors, electric power steering, industrial servo and linear motors, appliance and compressor motors, and camera and smartphone actuators. The company is vertically integrated from separation and refining through alloy to sintered magnet, in both Japan and Vietnam.

At a glance

Founded

1926 — Established 16 September 1926 as Shin-Etsu Nitrogen Fertilizer, renamed Shin-Etsu Chemical in 1940. The company's own chronology dates its rare-earth magnet development to 1972.

Headquarters

Tokyo, Japan

Ownership

Listed, TSE: 4063; also listed in Nagoya.

Stage

Shin-Etsu Chemical: Mature. Integrated from separation to magnet assembly in NdFeB and SmCo for decades.
Shin-Etsu — Fukui refinery: Developing. A roughly ¥35 billion refinery announced in June 2026 with half of it government-funded; capacity and start date are not disclosed.
Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam (SMMV): Mature. Shin-Etsu's integrated separation and magnet plant in Vietnam, operating since 2012 (magnets since 2016).

Listing

Tokyo: 4063
Tokyo: 4063
Listed through its parent or partner.

Revenue

JPY 2,573.9 billion consolidated net sales
Reported, fiscal year ended 31 March 2026.
Magnets are not broken out. They sit inside the Electronics Materials segment, which reported JPY 1,015.8 billion, but that segment is dominated by semiconductor silicon wafers, photoresists and photomask blanks and is not a usable magnet proxy.
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
Sintered rare-earth magnets, Japan and Vietnam combined — reported by Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, not published by the company, and not broken down by country	approximately 3,400 t/yr	Operating	Jan 2026
Sintered rare-earth magnets, Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam, Hai Phong — after a doubling announced in 2017	2,200 t/yr. This is the most recent company-published figure and it dates from June 2017; treat it as a floor of unknown currency.	Operating	Jun 2017
Rare-earth separation and refining, Hai Phong, Vietnam, operating since 2013 and feeding the adjacent magnet plant	no tonnage published	Operating	Apr 2014
Rare-earth separation and refining by solvent extraction, Takefu Plant, Echizen, Fukui, Japan — which the company describes as the only large-scale separation and refining plant in Japan, in mass production since 1971	no tonnage published	Operating	Sep 2026
New heavy rare earth separation and refining facility, Fukui, Japan — press-reported and company-acknowledged rather than company-announced. The company says it can extract 16 of the 17 rare earth elements using its existing refining technology.	capacity not disclosed. Investment reported at at least JPY 35 billion, of which JPY 17.5 billion is to be covered by Japanese government subsidy. The company said the total is not finalized and declined to give a start date.	Announced	Jun 2026
Magnet recycling — magnets generated in the company's own NdFeB manufacturing process together with used magnets returned from customers' processes, handled hydrometallurgically inside its own separation circuits	volumes not disclosed. Trade reporting describes the operation as industrial scale, running since 2008 in Japan and 2013 in Vietnam.	Operating	Apr 2024
Certified critical-minerals supply-assurance plan for the same Fukui refinery — METI's own record (2026重要鉱物第1号-1) predates Shin-Etsu's own 11 June 2026 press acknowledgment by three weeks and independently corroborates the JPY 17.5 billion subsidy figure already reported	subsidy of approximately JPY 17.5 billion, of the at least JPY 35 billion total investment reported	Announced	2026-05-19
Certified permanent-magnet supply-assurance plan naming Shin-Etsu Chemical together with Shin-Etsu Magnetics Thailand, Shin-Etsu Magnetics Philippines, and Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam (SMMV) — METI's separate permanent-magnet track, administered through NEDO (2024永久磁石第1号-1)	subsidy of approximately JPY 13 billion; no per-site or production tonnage disclosed	Announced	2024-04-09
A second, later certified permanent-magnet supply-assurance plan naming Shin-Etsu Chemical and SMMV only (2025永久磁石第1号-1)	amount not published in METI's index; the underlying plan document was not accessible	Announced	2025-04-30

Narrative

Shin-Etsu Chemical, founded in 1926 and listed in Tokyo and Nagoya, makes sintered NdFeB and samarium-cobalt magnets through its Magnetic Materials Division, reported within the Electronics Materials segment. Company materials date its rare-earth magnet development to 1972 and describe the Takefu Plant in Echizen, Fukui as Japan's only large-scale rare-earth separation and refining plant. In Vietnam, Shin-Etsu Magnetic Materials Vietnam has separated and refined rare earths at Hai Phong since 2013 and began sintering magnets there in 2015; a 2017 release put capacity at 2,200 metric tons per year. Press reports in June 2026 described a planned JPY 35 billion rare-earth refinery in Fukui, half covered by government subsidy.

Where public sources disagree

No magnet-level revenue is published anywhere. Shin-Etsu does not break out rare-earth magnets as a segment or product line. That absence is itself worth noting: the Electronics Materials segment figure is not a magnet number.
No capacity figure has ever been published for the Takefu magnet plant or for either separation and refining operation.
Vietnam capacity does not reconcile across releases. The April 2014 release planned 2,000 t/yr in two phases; the June 2017 release states capacity was then 1,100 t/yr before doubling to 2,200 t/yr. The company has published no reconciliation, and no figure since 2017.
Trade press describes Shin-Etsu as operating two refining facilities in Japan, while the company's own rare-earth site calls Takefu the only large-scale separation and refining plant in the country. The scale qualifier may reconcile them; the two statements are not consistent as written.
The June 2026 Fukui refinery does not appear as a Shin-Etsu press release. Coverage is from Jiji, Bloomberg, Reuters, Nikkei and Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun, with the company confirming the project but declining to give capacity, products or a start date; a Japanese-language source pass in September 2026 found no subsequent Japanese outlet has published capacity, products, site or timeline either.
METI runs rare earths and magnets as two separate certification tracks — critical minerals (with JOGMEC) and permanent magnets (with NEDO) — so a search of one misses awards on the other. The Fukui refinery's JPY 17.5 billion subsidy sits on the critical-minerals track and was certified 19 May 2026, three weeks before Shin-Etsu's own 11 June 2026 press acknowledgment; the SMMV-related capacity is separately supported by two permanent-magnet-track certifications (April 2024 and April 2025). Neither track publishes a production tonnage for any Shin-Etsu award.
The only published figure covering Shin-Etsu's magnet production in Japan does not isolate Japan. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence reported on 13 January 2026 that the company "operates around 3,400tpa of sintered magnet capacity across Japan and Vietnam." That is press reporting rather than company disclosure, Benchmark credits no source for it, and the company has not confirmed it. Setting it against Shin-Etsu's own Vietnam figure of 2,200 t/yr to infer a Japanese number is not supported: the Vietnam figure dates from June 2017 and is a floor of unknown currency, the two are of different vintages, and Benchmark publishes no split. No figure for Japan alone exists in any source.

Fact checks from the digest

Claims made about this company that the weekly digest has put against this atlas, newest first. The verdict and the working are here in full; the issue each came from is for subscribers.

contested · Digest issue 006 · 28 September 2026

Somebody finally published a number for Japanese magnet capacity

Both figures go on the atlas and neither is treated as settled, for four reasons that have to be said before anybody builds a plan on them.
Neither is a Japanese figure. Shin-Etsu's 3,400 tpa is explicitly Japan and Vietnam combined, and Benchmark publishes no split. Shin-Etsu's own only published magnet tonnage is 2,200 t/yr for Vietnam, from June 2017 — a floor of unknown currency. Subtracting one from the other to get a Japanese number is not supported and the atlas does not do it. The Proterial figure carries no country and no plant at all.
The Proterial number is segment-qualified. “For traction motors” is a floor for the company, not a nameplate, and Proterial's magnet business is wider than traction motors. It also cannot be added to the trade-reported more than 2,000 t/yr for its China plant, because nothing says whether China sits inside or outside it.
These are analyst assertions. Benchmark credits no primary source and neither company has published the figures. They go on the page as press reporting, attributed, not as disclosed capacity.
And they are contested by figures I cannot print. Private market intelligence circulating in this industry puts Shin-Etsu's combined total far higher — different by roughly a factor of seven. I have no public document for that, so it does not appear here as a number. What this changes is the shape of the argument: until this week it was an unpublished private claim against silence. Now it is an unpublished private claim against a dated, citable, attributable figure, and that is a better position to argue from even though nothing is resolved.

Sources

Consolidated financial results, FY ended 31 March 2026 — Shin-Etsu Chemical (2026-04-28)
Company history — Shin-Etsu Chemical (accessed 2026-09-18)
Doubling rare earth magnet capacity in Vietnam — Shin-Etsu Chemical (2017-06-22)
Construction of a rare earth magnet plant in Hai Phong — Shin-Etsu Chemical (2014-04-21)
Separation and refining by solvent extraction, Takefu Plant — Shin-Etsu Chemical (accessed 2026-09-18)
Japan government backs new Shin-Etsu rare earth refinery — Mining Weekly, sourcing Reuters (2026-06-11)
Certified critical-minerals supply-assurance plans — Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) (2026-09)
Certified permanent-magnet supply-assurance plans — Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) (2026-09)
Shin-Etsu to build new rare-earth refining facility (16 of 17 elements; JPY 17.5bn subsidy of at least JPY 35bn total) — Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun / Newswitch (2026-06-12)

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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