While Japan's economic woes have knocked the beans out of other commodities, demand for coffee has gone from good to better and looks set to hit a record high this year, a Japanese coffee roasters' association said.
Japan, the world's third-biggest coffee importer after the US and Germany, purchased 235,835 tonnes of green coffee in the first seven months of this year, up 2.6 percent year-on-year, according to Finance Ministry statistics.
Japan's roasted coffee imports soared 60.2 percent to 2,096 tonnes in the same period.
"We expect Japanese coffee demand to mark a record high this year. Consumption was not affected by the economic slump," Masao Yamashita, executive director of the All Japan Coffee Association, said in a recent interview.
Yamashita attributed the surge in roasted coffee imports to the success of US-style specialty coffee shop chains such as Starbucks Corp and Tully's Coffee Corp. Lacking roasting plants in Japan, they import their beans from their US facilities.
The increase in green coffee imports -- used by domestic roasters to produce instant coffee, regular coffee and canned coffee drinks -- was thanks to the growth of home-use coffee, Yamashita said.
Coffee demand in Japan rose 5.5 percent year-on-year to a record 416,090 tonnes on a green-coffee basis last year.
Yamashita said per-capita consumption of coffee reached 3.17 kg a year last year, surpassing the 2.42kg consumed in Britain -- another country where people are traditionally tea-drinkers.
Japan's per-capita coffee consumption could match the 4.07kg a year savored by Americans and the 5.24kg drunk by continental Europeans, he said.
But growth will depend on roasters' ability to come up with new products to meet consumers' changing needs, he said.
Yamashita cited the success of disposable drip-filters -- small paper filters packed with coffee that allow people to make a single cup of freshly brewed coffee quickly and easily.
Better processing techniques have also raised the standard of instant coffee, helping consumption, he said. Instant coffee accounts for about 44 percent of overall Japanese consumption, while regular coffee makes up some 34 percent. Liquid coffee in cans or bottles accounts for the rest.
The lickety-split expansion of espresso coffee shop chains Starbucks and Tully's has been the hottest topic in Japan's coffee market in recent years, but their growth was achieved at the expense of traditional, individually owned coffee shops, Yamashita said.
Starbucks and Tully's Coffee Japan Co Ltd are now nipping at the heels of Doutor Coffee Co Ltd, Japan's largest coffee shop chain with 1,070 outlets.
"The number of traditional coffee shops has declined as they lose out to the self-service coffee shop chains," Yamashita said. "The growth of Doutor and Starbucks does not necessarily offset the decrease of traditional stores."
The number of Japan's coffee shops peaked in 1980 at 154,630. It has declined steadily since then and now stands at about 90,000.
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