Kitagawa Iron Works Ltd (KIW) is a Japanese mixed engineering group founded some 75 years ago and listed on the Tokyo stock exchange. Its products cover machine tool accessories, building materials, a foundry and construction equipment. In 1982 Kitagawa Europe Ltd (KEL) was founded as a joint venture between KIW and S. Threipland to promote the machine tool accessory products firstly in the UK and then by 1985 throughout Europe, Middle East, India and Africa via a distributor network. In 2001 KEL opened its own offices in Dusseldorf Germany to deal in Germany and the ex Eastern Block countries and in 2007 KEL opened an office in Pune, India to trade directly throughout India.