There is a very large amount of misinformation and wild speculation all over the internet about place of manufacture of many binoculars. In today’s global marketplace companies change material and component suppliers, some more often than others. Also, these complex optical instruments have a lot of parts, and fewer and fewer are 100% sourced from 1x specific country. Ex, Leica Trinovid and some rangefinders are made in Portugal with worldwide components; Swarovski, while stamped made in Austria, sometimes contain Japanese (Ohara Glass) or other worldwide sourced components.
Some like Maven, Tract, Riton, etc are completely OEM
Some like Zeiss Conquest are a mix - a good percentage of OEM (housing and some internal components) with some Zeiss components, the components and optical system all combined, refined, assembled and QA’d by Zeiss in Germany (the original Conquests were made at the Zeiss plant in Hungary). Now I am aware that a very large European dealer on BirdForm disagrees with Zeiss over the place of manufacture and folks have run with that and call it a completely Kamakura manufactured glass. Zeiss does not agree with this, publicly or privately. In fact, it was the source a big disagreement with that dealer. I’ve followed up with Zeiss multiple times, with multiple reps, directly at multiple shows, etc. The answer has been consistent - not completely OEM. But it is a clumsy explanation as it is partially OEM / partially Zeiss and Zeiss subsidiary / corporate partner, but all are combined and perfected by Zeiss in Germany. Zeiss is a massive company - In fact “Schott Glass” is made in Schott plants to Schott specifications all over the world. Zeiss claims that the Conquest receives the majority of the product’s value from what is done to that product in Germany and that’s why it gets the Made in Germany label. If it didn’t Zeiss would have some legal hurdles to market that product in the USA but could still likely sell it in the EU. This is consistent as Zeiss openly admits the Terra is not made in Germany.
Just a quick observation on Asian manufacture outside of Japan. It is continually improving. Making quality optics isn’t rocket science and can be done to high quality anywhere.
Not claiming expertise or to have relationships with insiders, but in today’s global economy, place of manufacture is nowhere near as clean as it used to be.