Japanese writing instruments and art materials manufacturer Pentel is celebrating 80 years of successful business in 2026. The company will be celebrating at the London Stationery Show, showcasing new products, as well as recent successes and established favourites.
Name Change
Now, as Pentel Co. Ltd. enters its ninth decade the company the company’s name will change to ASTRUM CORPORATION, and this has been phased in since 1 April 2026. A companyspokesperson has said:
“In order to drive our transformation towards becoming one of the world’s leading general stationery manufacturers the company has opted to conduct a staged merger through to 2028. To highlight the significance of this integration our corporate name is set to change from Pentel Co. Ltd. to ASTRUM CORPORATION.”
The name ‘astrum’ which refers to a celestial body, was chosen to “encapsulate the bridging of intelligence and sensitivity sought after in a stationery company”.
Each brand within the ASTRUM family will maintain its own unique brand identity and the long-established and widely recognised Pentel name will be maintained as a business brand globally.
Pentel UK marketing manager, Wendy Vickery, comments:
“For 80 years Pentel’s mission has been to develop and deliver user-friendly writing instruments and art materials that enable people all over the world to express their ideas creatively, conveniently and imaginatively. As we celebrate this important anniversary and enter the era of ASTRUM we will continue our commitment to innovation, quality and performance, introducing desirable new products, strengthening our production and supporting our customers as we look ahead to an exciting future together.”
Japan Stationery Co. Ltd.
Founded in 1946 as the Japan Stationery Co. Ltd. by the late chairman Yukio Horie, the business initially purchased and sold stationery products. Mr Horie was among the first entrepreneurs in Japan to predict that arts and cultural pastimes such as music, painting, sculpture and writing would increase significantly in popularity after the Second World War. He made it his mission to develop crayons and pastels that would realise the dreams of his customers, and he quickly established his first factory to take on the challenge of developing art materials.
Name Pentel: Pastel, Painting and “Tell”
For the first decade the business produced crayons and oil pastels, which later inspired the company’s new name ‘Pentel’, combining the words ‘painting’ and ‘pastel’ and suggestive of ‘pen’ – the next stage in the company’s history of product development – in addition to ‘tell’, as in communicating. The company began exporting to overseas markets in 1953 and just over ten years later had opened another two factories.
Keen to provide alternative methods for people to feel the joy of expressing their creative ideas Yukio Horie focused his attention on developing a range of innovative new products, including in 1960 the Pentel Pencil, the world’s first mechanical pencil with a push button for advancing the lead.
During the 60s Pentel truly came to the attention of a global market. In 1963 the company launched the fibre-tipped Sign Pen. Different to any other pen on the market at the time, Sign Pen achieved a major publicity coup when, after a trade fair, a sample fell into the hands of US President Lyndon Johnson, who was extremely enthusiastic and, according to contemporary press reports, ordered the pen by the boxload. After this was reported in the press Sign Pen became incredibly popular and was even adopted by NASA, travelling into space on a Gemini mission in 1966. Such was the level of publicity that Sign Pen became a huge, ongoing success, with billions sold to date around the world.
Sign Pen was followed by the Pentel Pen, a permanent marker with a robust acrylic fibre tip, known as N50. A must-have in factories, warehouses and offices around the world N50 soon became the tried and trusted marker for permanent, waterproof and fade-resistant results on most surfaces, including metal, plastic, wood, glass, rubber and thick card.
Important product milestones were achieved in the 1970s, with the launch of two of the company’s most iconic products: the green-barrelled Ball Pentel rollerball and the P200 series mechanical pencil. To be cool at school in the 1980s no self-respecting pocket or pencil case was complete without a Ball Pentel. Further product innovations followed in the 80s and 90s, with the invention of the first valve-controlled correction pen and the smooth flowing Hybrid gel roller range in 26 colours. With the arrival of a new century Pentel continued took superior product performance to a new level with the launch of EnerGel, the first ultra-quick drying rollerball pens, resistant to smudging and suitable for right and left-handed writers.
Further innovations have launched in the last decade, including Hybrid DualMetallic gel pens, with iridescent ink that writes in different sparkling shades on dark or light coloured paper and two recent award winners: Mattehop, a vibrant gel pen with ink that almost looks like plastic when it lays down and can even be used to write on photos, and Floatune, a pen featuring a new generation of ink, with dual-ball tip technology.
In recent years Pentel companies around the world have offered products from PLUS Corporation, one of Japan’s biggest stationery companies, which acquired a majority share in Pentel Co. Ltd. towards the end of 2022.
In the UK Pentel (ASTRUM) now offers a wide range of PLUS products for office and leisure time including premium quality Curved Blade Scissors, Staple-Free Staplers, glue tapes and correction rollers and the innovative Guard Your Identity Camouflage Roller.
