IWAKI Pumps in the early days
Soft drink vending machines boosts IWAKIs pumping adventure
More than 60 years ago, in 1956, the Japanese engineer Yoshiaki Fujinaka lay the foundation for a company, that later turned out to be the world’s leading manufacture of centrifugal pumps made from polypropylene, fluoroplastics.
Just few years after the foundation of IWAKI, Yoshiaki Fujinaka and his team of engineers developed the first centrifugal pump. He named the pump “LP1” which was an abbreviation of “Labo Pump the 1st”.
In 1962, IWAKI received the first large order of LP1 for use in vending machines in Japan, and with that, the pump became the first mass-produced centrifugal pump from IWAKI.
IWAKI’s labo pump was small, compact and for this reason very suitable for use in vending machines. Within short time, several leading Japanese manufactures of vending machines had implemented the pump.
One of the many loyal IWAKI employees, M. Okude, clearly recalls the juice vending machines from his childhood: “At the age of 10, I clearly recalls being fascinated by the juice vending machine, that had a fantastic fountain of orange juice”.