OMRON’s electronic components business has begun a new chapter as Aratas Corporation following an acquisition by Carlyle.
Aratas Corporation, headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, has launched under a new management structure following completion of a planned share transfer. Led by President and CEO Masahiko Ezaki, Aratas Corporation was established on 1st July 2026 through the spin-off of OMRON’s Device & Module Solutions (DMS) business. It now operates in a strategic partnership with Carlyle.
In a pre-launch media briefing, Samira Amani, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Aratas, stressed that the new company is far from a startup. “Aratas is not a startup. The scale already exists: the production size, the quantity, and the products are all in place today,” she said. Aratas has around 6,000 employees, 65% of them outside Japan, and eight production sites (five in Japan, two in Greater China, and one in Malaysia) producing approximately 2.2 billion units a year.
For European customers, Aratas brings assurance and innovation together. It carries forward more than 90 years of OMRON heritage, including decades of Japanese design and manufacturing excellence, proven product reliability, and supply assurance. The established European team remains in place, preserving product expertise, customer support, regional capabilities, and distributor relationships. With its dedicated focus on switching, connecting, and sensing, Aratas can respond faster to changing customer requirements and align development and investment more closely with customer priorities.
On continuity, Amani said the transition has been designed around customers. “The whole transition is planned to give continuity for our customers. Our product families and specifications continue, our manufacturing sites continue, and logistics, supply chain, and channels stay where they have been,” she said. The sharper focus on switching, connecting, and sensing also changes how the business can invest. “This gives us more autonomy to direct our investment towards these areas, whether that is product development, talent acquisition, or making decisions faster,” she added.
Aratas’ portfolio of relays, switches, connectors, and sensors supports the safe and reliable operation of mission-critical systems through power switching, control, connectivity, and sensing functions. Its global growth strategy focuses on markets such as energy management, mobility, digital infrastructure, and smart automation. In addition to its established businesses, Aratas will explore medium- to long-term opportunities in fields including healthcare, aviation, and space, where emerging social needs may create new applications for its technologies.
In Europe, Aratas is implementing this strategy, focusing on key areas, such as high-power electrification, grid-scale energy storage, and high-frequency domain testing including automated test equipment (ATE) for semiconductors. The company combines product expertise, regional support, and supply assurance to help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), electronics manufacturing services (EMS) providers, distributors, and other customers move more quickly from system design through qualification to production.
Fabrizio Petris, Senior Strategic Marketing Manager at Aratas, said the breadth of applications comes down to one common thread. “Wherever there is electricity, we can use our relays for switching and isolation. What is common across all these diversified markets is that our components are critical for the performance and delivery of the devices where they are used,” he said. In energy, he pointed to Aratas technology for controlling DC arcs, which are difficult to interrupt because the arc is continuous, and to high-power relays engineered for low contact resistance and low heat generation, which he said can reduce temperatures in the application by 5 to 10°C.
On semiconductor testing, Petris revealed that Aratas will bring a new range of interface products to market in October, built around electroformed contact pins for microcontroller and test-socket applications, including high-frequency and automotive testing. Asked how the range compares with competing products, Petris said Aratas is not aiming to cover the widest frequency range. “Our differentiation is more on the reliability side,” he said, adding that Aratas also builds the socket together with the contacts.
“European manufacturers are balancing compressed development cycles with tighter regulation, growing sustainability demands, and heightened supply chain risk,” said José Luis González del Val, Chief Operating Officer at Aratas Europe. “Component performance is only part of the answer. Reliable supply, verifiable product data, and practical support for certification and qualification matter just as much. The transition to Aratas carries this assurance forward while adding greater focus and agility. Together, these strengths are key to achieving our ambition of becoming the first-choice partner wherever component selection directly affects system performance, risk control, and business outcomes.”
Sustainability is part of the proposition too. “Low contact resistance means less heat and less energy wasted, so we can increase the efficiency of the device where our components are used,” said Petris. He added that Aratas is defining the carbon footprint of each of its products so that customers can access the data, with some estimates already certified, and that the company is investing in additional capacity, with new products in the pipeline.
The name Aratas is a combination of two Japanese words meaning ‘new’ and ‘tomorrow’, reflecting the company’s mission to harness innovative connections between people and technology to create a new tomorrow. The values Aspire, Agile, and Ahead define how the company will pursue that mission, while the tagline Always New, Always Electric captures its future-facing direction.
