1. Establishment of NIPPONDENSO COMPRESSORES LTDA. (NDBC)

[4] Efforts to overcome adversity

Having grown rapidly starting in the late 1960s, Brazil’s automobile market saw the arrival of motorization in the 1970s. In 1980, the number of new vehicle sales in Brazil reached a record high of 1.14 million. Although the market had been expected to grow to 1.5 million to 2 million vehicle sales by the end of the 1980s, the country’s fiscal collapse forced the government to undertake a major shift in its economic policy, which placed severe pressure on the market and drove sales down 40% year-on-year in 1981.
As a measure to recover from this predicament, Toshihide Ueda, President & CEO of NDBC, set two targets.
The first target was to achieve a 100% share of the domestic market in Brazil. For this purpose, NDBC received support from the Air-conditioning Design Division at DENSO Headquarters in regard to compressor installation design, prototype production, and vibration testing, and made repeated vehicle tests with the cooperation of GM, Volkswagen, Ford, and Fiat in Brazil.
The second target was to aggressively pioneer export markets. NDBC would roll out cross-border sales activities targeting Ford Argentina and Ford Venezuela. Although DENSO Headquarters had already engaged in sales activities covering both companies, it shifted to providing support in order to rescue NDBC from its predicament. These efforts enabled NDBC to carry out its export obligations under BEFIEX.