Kowa is a leading distributor of specialty chemicals, food and cosmetic ingredients, with offices in 16 countries. It offers hundreds of high purity monomers like (meth)acrylates and (meth)acrylamides from various drugmakers in Japan from Pails up to Iso-Tanks volume. It is part of the Kowa Group, founded in 1894.

In December 2013 it became the subject of legal action from Nissan Chemical after making and selling generic copies of the hypercholesterolemia agent Livalo (pitavastatin).