Tomoki Okamura, Representative Director, President and Chief Executive Officer“What is essential is invisible to the eye.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote that line in The Little Prince, and it has resonated deeply in Japan ever since, becoming one of the most quoted lines in the language. It also reads as a precise manufacturing philosophy, one Okamura Corporation has built 110 years of production around. It produces nuts, the small fastening components that hold together automobiles, electrical assemblies, construction frameworks and rail-mounted connector systems.
“We manufacture nuts and fastening components known as the salt of industry. Salt may not be conspicuous, but it is an essential ingredient. We are a small company, and we value doing things honestly and with integrity that only we can do,” says Tomoki Okamura, representative director, president and Chief Executive Officer.
That philosophy drives every stage of production, from raw material consultation through final inspection and Manufacturing Outlook APAC names Okamura the Top Square Nuts Manufacturer in APAC 2026 as a direct reflection of that standard.
A Manufacturing Method Worth Preserving
How does Okamura maintain competitiveness using traditional press processing techniques in modern manufacturing?
Press processing is an older technique, and the industry has largely moved on. Okamura has not. It designs and manufactures its own tooling in-house, giving it direct control over quality at the earliest stage of the production chain while passing cost advantages to clients. That pairing of process ownership and pricing efficiency is something few competitors can match, and it has kept it relevant across automotive, electrical, construction and connector markets where procurement teams balance spec compliance against unit cost.
Engineering for Non-Standard Requirements
Why is upstream material consultation important for producing non-standard fastening component geometries?
When a client requires a nut that falls outside any standard profile, Okamura begins upstream. The team consults with wire-drawing manufacturers to determine whether they can produce the required coil material geometry, then proceeds to die design. Standard shearing dies handle most requests, but applications with tighter tolerances shift the process toward trimming dies, where dimensional control is more exacting. The same camera inspection workflow that governs mass production governs prototype validation.
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We manufacture nuts and fastening components known as the salt of industry. Salt may not be conspicuous, but it is an essential ingredient. We are a small company, and we value doing things honestly and with integrity that only we can do.
Okamura demonstrated that capability about 15 years ago when a globally recognized Japanese automotive manufacturer required special-shaped nuts for die-casting electronic circuit boards. The geometry fell well outside standard parameters, and the tolerance requirements were strict. Okamura produced multiple prototype molds, pressing and evaluating each iteration, and ultimately delivered components that met the dimensional specification. The project raised its technical and process management standards and positioned its engineering team to take on increasingly complex custom work.
Built Around What Clients Need
In what way does application-specific design influence Okamura’s product development and manufacturing processes?
Okamura’s operational impact extends into construction applications where it presses nuts into semicircular and trapezoidal profiles to fit within rail-shaped components. Because rails vary in geometry across installations, the shaped nuts must travel smoothly along the rail interior while holding a stable connection to whatever is being fastened. Clients working with these assemblies confirm that the pressed profiles deliver exactly that performance. The design requirement came from the application, and the press method delivered the solution.
That same orientation drives Okamura’s ongoing R&D. It does not pursue tooling improvements and processing refinements speculatively; they follow directly from what clients require and what the press method can be pushed to deliver. Materials already extend beyond iron to include stainless steel and brass, chosen according to what each application demands in terms of corrosion resistance, conductivity or weight. For a company that has supplied the salt of industry for 110 years, the logic has never shifted: produce what customers need, produce it without fault and let the work speak.
