Our corporate motto, 'Akunaki sozo' translates to 'Ceaseless Creativity'. It was conceived by our founder in 1969, grasping the belief that individuals and corporations bear an equal mission to serve society through self-improvement.
Price tags that give shoppers a revolutionary way to find and try out clothes; labels that can track a medicine pill from its production to dosing; a warehousing system that visualises the movement of every item and every team member — our auto-ID solutions create new experiences, deliver safety and reassurance, and help solve societal challenges.
The industries we serve range from critical infrastructure organisations like healthcare and transport to everyday businesses from your local convenience store to global retail chains.
Regardless of your business's scale, geographical presence, or industry, our commitment is unwavering: to relentlessly pursue innovations that enhance global operations, beginning with individual worksites.
We partner with world-leading hardware and software manufacturers, regulatory bodies and industry associations to satisfy each customer's unique business needs.
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We believe in the power of collaboration and the value every solution partner and reseller brings to our business.
Click the button below and chat to us about becoming a SATO Oceania partner.
The SATO Group’s Mission is to “contribute towards a better and more sustainable world,” which is why sustainability is inseparable from our business.
As SDGs take on growing urgency and ESG initiatives become a priority for stakeholders, we established our basic policy for sustainability in 2018 and conducted a materiality assessment in 2019.
While formulating policies and action plans through our Sustainability Promotion Committee that reports directly to our team of executive officers, we promote materiality activities through our team of specialists to raise employee awareness about sustainability and bring in external expertise as well.
In the past, we have worked to increase corporate value and contribute to society. Moving forward, we will continue to identify material issues to improve sustainability performance and maximize our value creation cycle.
Hiroyuki Konuma
President and Group CEO
SATO Holdings Corporation
SATO’s journey began in 1940 when founder Yo Sato designed a box assembly made from bamboo. Over the years, we have changed our business model in roughly twenty-year intervals to respond to shifting market needs and technological innovations. Amidst the changes, there has always been one constant SATO spirit: Ceaseless Creativity. We see things with our own eyes to gain an understanding of on-site operations and initiate small changes day by day to solve problems. It’s our culture that will remain the only constant in times to come.
Wooden packages were essential for transporting large goods, but wood resources gradually became scarce in Japan due to the war. Yo Sato came up with the idea of producing a shipping box by weaving bamboo strips, and with its success, went on to invent a series of machinery to manufacture this box and patented them. He also invented a newspaper bundler that saved the time and labour of manually bundling newspapers for shipping. This machine made its way to major Japanese publishers, bento (boxed lunch) producers, and even the Bank of Japan, bringing about a logistics revolution at the time.
Japan entered a period of strong growth, and retail began to flourish. The variety and quantity of food and household items increased. As supermarkets sprang up across the country, centralized checkout lanes — now commonplace — were adopted, and retailers needed to apply price labels to each and every product, which was a time-consuming, repetitive job. To simplify this task, we launched the hand labeller in 1962, the start of our core business today for tagging variable information and identifiers to anything and everything. The hand labeller quickly spread throughout Japan’s retail sector and was later exported, making it a global phenomenon.
Schematic for the first-hand labeller, developed and coined by Yo Sato |
Price tag printed with hand labeller |
Hand labeler catalog for sales worldwide |
As supermarkets began using computerized point-of-sale (POS) systems, the need to print barcode labels exploded. Weigh-scale manufacturers and others launched direct thermal (DT) printers, but labels printed with DT had the drawback of fading after a few days of exposure to heat or light. Through trial and error, SATO developed the world’s first thermal transfer (TT) barcode printer, the M-2311, in 1981, allowing retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers to print quality, durable barcode labels. We also began producing labels in-house, catering to the unique apparel requirements, logistics, manufacturing and health care. This was the start of our auto-ID business to help customers gain greater accuracy and efficiency in on-site operations.
M-2311, the world’s first thermal transfer barcode label printer, launched in 1981 |
Barcode label |
* Technology to automatically identify and capture data and enter it into a computer system.
IT systems came to manage the flow of goods with more sophistication, and there was value in capturing on-site data to unlock the full potential of the technology. We began to offer integrated auto-ID solutions that consist of hardware, software, consumables, and maintenance services. New technologies such as RFID and voice recognition were incorporated to streamline operations and optimize supply chains. In 2015, we unveiled the world’s first IoT-ready label printing solution to minimize downtime of business-critical processes through preventative maintenance, remote support, and fleet management of network-connected printers centred around our flagship CL4/6NX line. It symbolized SATO’s growth from a printer manufacturer into a printing solutions provider.
CL4/6NX, the world’s first IoT-ready printing solution with remote support for preventative maintenance |
RFID for high-speed reads to enable labor savings |
Technological innovations and emerging societal/environmental challenges present challenges to management teams. For certainty in an age of uncertainty, insight based on accurate data is the key. With our Powered On Site expertise accumulated by solving operational pain points, we enhance our IoE solutions with auto-ID and auto-sensing of the status of goods and people to benefit our customers and their end users. We co-create optimized solutions with strategic partners and ultimately solve societal/environmental challenges for a better and more sustainable world.
SATO firmly believes that the most important asset of any business is its people. At SATO, you will be part of an inclusive, equal-opportunity workplace environment that will challenge you positively and constantly encourage and empower you to succeed.
As we embrace a new era where competition is no longer limited by geography or industry, the know-how, knowledge and experience you can bring will provide us with the necessary edge to grow and succeed.
