Koyo bearings in the UAE

Koyo does not exist as a company any more, and that is not a criticism of it. It is the bearing brand of JTEKT Corporation, whose registered head office is at Asahi-machi in Kariya, Aichi prefecture. That address is worth stating plainly because the wrong one circulates widely: Koyo Seiko, the pre-merger business, was an Osaka company, and Osaka gets attached to JTEKT constantly by writing that has not caught up.

JTEKT is a large company by any measure and it publishes the numbers itself: capital of 45,591 million yen, 43,233 consolidated employees as of March 2026, and consolidated sales of 1,924,950 million yen for the year ended 31 March 2026. Its own description of its main business is steering systems, driveline components, bearings, machine tools, electronic control devices and home accessory equipment.

Read that list again, because it explains the shape of the Koyo aftermarket catalogue. Bearings sit third. A company that also builds steering systems and driveline components is going to sell you a power steering unit under the same range as a wheel bearing, and Koyo does exactly that. If you have been treating Koyo as a bearings-only badge, the catalogue is wider than you think.

JTEKT is also a Toyota Group company, and says so on its own site, which carries a Toyota Group section listing the group's affiliates. We are not putting a shareholding percentage on this page. The figure in circulation is somebody else's research rather than JTEKT's own statement, and a number is exactly the sort of thing that should come from the company it describes.

From April 2022 JTEKT began unifying its global brands under the JTEKT name, and the Koyo bearing brand name and logo transition to it. This is the single most useful thing this page can tell a person standing at a counter, because it is the reason two boxes on the same shelf can be the same part.

JTEKT's own words for what is happening are worth reproducing carefully. It calls this only a change of brand name and logo. It says the same people, the same company, the same factories and the same products, now with a unified name. It states that legal entity names are not changing and that transaction and banking information is not changing. And it says it anticipates a lengthy transition period for packaging and part markings, because of the logistics supply chain, the number of unique parts and the goods already in stock.

That last point is the practical one. A transition measured against goods already in stock is a transition measured in years, and it means old Koyo packaging and new JTEKT packaging will sit side by side in this market for a long time. A box that says JTEKT where you expected Koyo is not a substitute part and not a counterfeit; it is the same manufacturer with the current logo on it.

One thing we are not going to tell you is that part numbers are unchanged. JTEKT's notice covers the brand name, the logo, the legal entities and the banking details, and it does not mention part numbers either way. Being silent is not the same as saying nothing changes, so the honest instruction is the one that works regardless: read the number on the box against the number on the part you took off.

Koyo's own aftermarket range is more specific than most bearing catalogues, and the specificity is where people get caught. It lists tensioner and idler bearings, bearings for alternators, water pump bearings, clutch release bearings, bearings for transmissions and differential gears, hub units for passenger vehicles, wheel bearings for commercial vehicles, oil seals for cars, power steering units and constant velocity joint boots.

Three of those read as something they are not, and it is worth being blunt about each. A water pump bearing is the bearing and shaft a pump is built around, not a water pump. An alternator bearing is the small bearing inside an alternator, not an alternator. A clutch release bearing is the bearing that carries the release load, not a clutch kit, and a workshop that has the gearbox out will almost always want the plate and cover too.

None of that is Koyo being coy. It is a bearing maker listing bearings, and the confusion comes from the aftermarket habit of naming a bearing after the assembly it lives in. The useful consequence is that Koyo is a brand you buy at component level. If you are shopping at assembly level, you are shopping for something else and the badge will not save you.

The two odd ones out are the power steering units and the boots, and they are odd because they are not bearings at all. They are there because JTEKT is a steering company as much as a bearing company, and the Koyo aftermarket range reflects the parent rather than the badge's history.

JTEKT publishes an anti-counterfeiting programme for bearings and describes it in unusually concrete terms, which is why this page can describe it at all rather than gesturing at the problem.

Its stated position is that counterfeit bearings may lead to serious accidents, and that the good ones are the problem: it says counterfeits can be manufactured with such precision that they are difficult to identify as counterfeit at first glance, while their quality and safety cannot be guaranteed. That is a more honest framing than most, because it concedes that looking at the part is not always enough.

Two physical measures. Since 2016 JTEKT has applied holograms to bearing packaging boxes, and it says that if the outline of the hologram appears blurred or unclear the product may be counterfeit. Since June 2019 it has printed QR codes for authenticity verification on packaging labels. The code is read with the free bearing authenticator app published by the industry association, available through the app stores and through WeChat, and JTEKT sets out three possible outcomes: the product is genuine, the scan limit has been exceeded and the product may therefore be counterfeit, or the item is confirmed counterfeit.

The middle outcome is the one worth understanding before you use it. A code that scans as over-limit is not proof of a fake and not proof of a genuine part. It means that code has been read more times than one item should generate, which is what happens when a real label is photographed and reproduced. JTEKT's own instruction there is to verify with the manufacturer, and it publishes routes for that: the app itself, an email contact form, authorised distributors and its overseas hub networks.

Since 2016 and June 2019 are also dates rather than decorations. Genuinely old stock predates both, so an older box without a hologram or a code is not evidence of anything, and a shop that has been sitting on a slow-moving part number for years is the ordinary explanation rather than the alarming one.

Koyo and Koyorad are different companies making different parts. Koyo is bearings and steering. Koyorad makes radiators. The names share their first four letters and nothing else, and in this market that costs people time.

We ran into it in our own data rather than in theory. One UAE shop in our records lists a brand string reading Koyo, and its recorded stock covers both wheel bearings and radiators, so the string on its own is genuinely ambiguous. What settled it was the company the name keeps: on that shop's own brand list, Koyo sits in a run of Japanese bearing makers, between two of its direct competitors and beside two more. That is a bearings shelf. We counted the shop for Koyo and not for Koyorad on that basis, and we are telling you the reasoning rather than the conclusion because the reasoning is the part that is checkable.

It also describes how Koyo is actually bought here. Not as a chosen brand, but as one name in a row of Japanese bearing names on one counter's shelf, with the choice made by whichever number is in the drawer. That is a perfectly sound way to buy a bearing. It is a poor way to buy a radiator, and asking for a Koyo when you want cooling will get you a bearing more often than not.

There is no UAE entity we can name for Koyo. JTEKT publishes nothing we could read about an office, an importer or an authorised distributor here, and our own records turn up a single chain carrying the brand. One shop is not a supply picture, so this page does not pretend Koyo is easy to find in the Emirates. The counters shown below were matched on the category of part they keep, and the sentence above them says exactly that rather than dressing it up.

What does travel well is the buying discipline, and Koyo has one unusual wrinkle in it. Expect the box to say JTEKT. Expect other boxes on the same shelf to still say Koyo. Neither is a warning sign, and a counter that tells you they are different products is a counter that has not read the notice.

Beyond that: bring the old bearing or its number, check the number on the box before you pay, and if the box carries a code, scan it while you are still standing there. That last step costs nothing and is the only check on this page that the manufacturer itself will answer for.