Our story

Kobay Tool & Stampings was established in 1987 by Mr. Kaz Kobayashi. Kobayashi, a tool & die maker from Japan, worked on design and tooling for the first car ever built by Honda in Japan. After relocating to Toronto during the 1970’s, he built a successful die manufacturing and stamping company, servicing Tier 1 suppliers to Honda’s North American manufacturing plants.

Kobay was born out of the merger of Kobay Tool & Stampings and Enstel Manufacturing in July 2006.

Kobayayshi has stayed on as an integral part of the management team and is an active senior advisor in the business. Today, over 70% of the products Kobay produces, end up on Honda vehicles.

Kobay occupies a facility of more than 130,000 square feet with over 30 Mig and resistance welding assembly cells and 19 stamping presses with capacities of 110 to 650 tons and CNC tube benders, in Scarborough Ontario.

In April of 2016, Kobay South LLC opened its doors in Oxford, Alabama. The state of the art, built to suit facility occupies over 65,000 sq. ft. and offers both stamping and complex welded assemblies to its customer base.

Kobay has built a successful niche in the automotive parts supply chain by differentiating itself from its Tier 2 competitors. As far back as 2006, Kobay developed the concept of a Tier 1.5.

Kobay identified the need for the Tier 2 to be able to develop and grow its capabilities, specifically on the engineering, advanced process development and design side. Kobay strategically focused on certain product lines, for example, seat assembly.

With lower overheads and manufacturing cost structures than Tier 1’s, the strategy has been a tremendous success. Today, Kobay’s product basket contains a significant amount of complex, welded, full seating assemblies and sub-assemblies, complimented by stampings.

Kobay can offer a heightened value-added proposition of being able to provide design input and can build an assembly from inception to production.