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.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats