Furukawa

Furukawa Electric was founded in 1884 in Yokohama, Japan, as Nikko Copper Works, a copper smelter created by Furukawa Ichibei, the businessman who built one of Japan's great industrial conglomerates. In 1908 it bought Yokohama Wire Manufacturing and, in 1920, merged its copper business with it, forming Furukawa Denki Kogyo. Today it is headquartered in Tokyo, and the group makes wire and cable, electronic components, optical fibre and cable, laser modules and network equipment, with around 50,000 consolidated employees in 2022.

The Latin American operation began in 1974. In 1973 Kaiser Aluminum was looking for a buyer for its aluminium cable plant in Lorena (São Paulo state); with Furukawa Electric as intermediary, the deal closed in March 1974. The company was called Furukawa Industrial S/A Produtos Elétricos (FISA) and later became Furukawa Electric LatAm, headquartered in Curitiba. In 1980 it launched its first IT cable and opened an optical plant; in 1990 came the structured cabling system and the Furukawa Certified Professional programme; in 2001, a research laboratory in Curitiba.

In 2006 GigaLan was launched, a network cable with a flame-retardant outer jacket and dielectric properties, now one of the brand's structured cabling lines, alongside MultiLan. On 1 April 2025, the optical fibre cable operations of Furukawa Electric in Japan, of OFS (USA) and of Latin America were brought together under a new global brand, Lightera.