Is Kao mainly a detergent company?
Kao generated ¥1.6886 trillion of sales and ¥164.1 billion of operating income in FY2025. Fabric & Home Care—the disclosed category closest to the detergent image—generated ¥389.1 billion, about 23.0% of group sales by site calculation. Hygiene Living Care as a whole represented 32.5%. Meanwhile, Health Beauty Care was 25.7%, Cosmetics 15.5%, and Chemical 24.0%. Kao's chemical products range from surfactants to concrete additives, toner and ink materials, hard-disk polishing/cleaning materials and semiconductor manufacturing chemicals/materials. The company name originated with Kao Sekken soap, launched in 1890, but the business later expanded across detergents, sanitary products, beauty, health and industrial materials. Kao is therefore not a detergent company that became something else; it is a company that extended a soap-and-cleaning origin into multiple consumer and industrial domains.