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Our
History
The Santoku America, Inc. plant in Phoenix,
Arizona, USA, was built in 1966 by Nuclear Corporation of America
(NUCOR) and was then known as Research Chemicals. It began as a
rare earths separation plant, and, from its beginning, was
one of the few places in the world that excelled in the production of
a wide variety of rare earth products,
including bulk metals and alloys, fabricated custom shapes, sheets,
and foils, and high purity oxides and salts. As markets for rare
earth metals and alloys expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, additional
vacuum induction melting technology was installed to meet this growing
demand. In 1988, Research Chemicals was purchased by
Rhône-Poulenc, Inc. (RP) to expand their leadership in separated rare
earths into the areas of metals and alloys. It became one of the
world leaders in the production of rare earth alloys for the magnet
industry, such as neodymium-iron-boron and
samarium-cobalt. Other specialty rare earth alloys
were also produced for magnetostrictive, magneto-optic, refrigerative,
hydrogen storage, and battery uses. Additionally, the Phoenix
plant's broad analytical experience with rare earth metals, alloys and
compounds has made them a world leader in the field of rare earth
analysis. In 1998, RP split the company off into their newly
created Rhodia division, where it became part of Rhodia Rare Earths,
Inc. We continued to uphold our leadership in the rare earths
industry during these transitions, and still do to this day, although
the rare earth oxides and salts business that we specialized in for
many years remained with Rhodia after the sale of the Phoenix plant in
1999 and is no longer part of our domain.
During the same period (the 1960s), Santoku
Metal Industry
Co., Ltd. of Kobe, Japan, also became a renowned rare earths
supplier. Among other things, they established an extrusion
process for manufacturing lighter flints, supplying 1/3 of the world's
demand, and established a solvent extraction method for europium
to supply large amounts of highly pure europium oxide. In the
1970s, they were the first to develop oxide fused-salt
electrolysis, which made possible the large scale production of
mischmetal close to the composition found in the raw material
ore.
 In
the 1980s they received subsidies from MITI (Ministry of International
Trade and Industry) and the Science and Technology Agency of Japan to
research the manufacturing of hydrogen storage alloys, and the melting
and refining of high purity rare earth metals in an electro-beam
furnace. Then, in the 1990s, Santoku developed rare earth alloy
manufacturing using the rapid quench casting methods used today.
Our
Future
Santoku Metal Industry Co., Ltd. (renamed
Santoku Corporation or STC in April, 2000) is currently a
worldwide leader in the production of both mischmetal-nickel based
alloys for the rechargeable battery market and rare earth alloys (NdFeB
and SmCo) for the magnetics market. In October, 1999, Santoku
America, Inc. (SAI), the North American subsidiary of Santoku
Corporation, purchased Rhodia Rare Earths' metals and alloys
business. With this purchase, STC's goal of establishing a rare
earth metal and alloy manufacturing base outside Japan was
realized.
For SAI, which was originally established as a
marketing arm of STC, this purchase meant that SAI would now have a
North American manufacturing site for the sale of its rare earth
products in North America and throughout the world. By combining STC's existing technical expertise and
worldwide leadership with SAI's expanded manufacturing and marketing
capabilities, SAI is primed to be a major force in the foreseeable
future in all rare earth metal and alloy markets. Much of this
future leadership will be due directly to the installation of
state-of-the-art production technologies. |
