Hamamatsu

Brand description

Hamamatsu controls 90% of the global photomultiplier tube market. The market value of Hamamatsu Photonics is around 540 billion yen (4.4 billion dollars), and since going public over 20 years ago, the company has boasted an uninterrupted series of profits. 315 kilometers west of Tokyo, scientists built an underground laboratory to study cosmic rays. As a result of a series of experiments called Komiokande, a detector made up of a thousand photomultiplier tubes was placed inside a mountain and filled with thousands of tons of water. For the first time in history, it was then possible to observe difficult-to-detect neutrinos. Thanks to this discovery, Masatoshi Koshiba from the University of Tokyo received the Nobel Prize in 2002. The demand for photomultiplier tubes has helped Hamamatsu generate profits every year since 1996 when the company's shares were listed on the stock exchange.