Sumitomo Heavy Industries

Sumitomo Heavy Industries is a Japanese maker of industrial machinery, defence products, ships, bridges and steel structures, and it counts here as a vehicle maker because of its shipbuilding. It was formed in 1969 when Sumitomo Machinery, which began in 1888 as the repair works of the Besshi copper mine, merged with Uraga Heavy Industries, the successor of the old Uraga Dock Company. The group built merchant ships and training vessels at Uraga and at the Oppama yard in Yokosuka, which opened in 1971. In 1979 it built the supertanker later named Seawise Giant, described as the longest ship ever built, and in 1984 it launched the four-masted training barque Nippon Maru. The shipbuilding business was spun off in 2003 as Sumitomo Heavy Industries Marine and Engineering, while the parent kept its other lines of manufacture.