After a number of expansions and corporate reorganizations, the steel works are now owned by Nippon Steel (formerly the world's largest steel producer) and are important to the export market as a supplier to the car makers of Kyushu. In 2014, the Yahata Steel Works joined the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution, a serial nomination of sites that played an important part in the industrialization of Japan in the Bakumatsu and Meiji periods.
