Sapporo Holdings Ltd is planning to set up a brewery in the US by the end of 2024, as the top-selling Japanese beer in the US market seeks to expand its market share and cut costs.
“I would like to have a production base on the west coast,” Hiroyuki Nose, Sapporo Breweries’ vice president of marketing, said in an interview. “We make and import most of it from Canada and there are logistical costs. This is a challenge for us.”
The Tokyo-based beverage maker has not been able to scale up beer brewing in North America — its largest overseas market, said Nose, who is set to become president of Sapporo Breweries at the end of this month.
Sapporo might also look at acquiring a brewery or expanding its contract manufacturing in the US as part of the efforts, he said, declining to share more details, such as investment or the brewing capacity being planned.
A presence on US soil would not only save transportation costs for Sapporo, but also allow it to better penetrate what the Brewers Association, a craft-beer trade group, says is a US$116 billion US beer market.
The company predicts sales volume of its Sapporo Premium beer to increase 20 percent this year in North America, as demand recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although it lags rivals in its home market — it is the fourth-largest beer maker in Japan — Sapporo had an early start in the US, to which it began exporting in 1964, and has become a popular offering at restaurants.
Sapporo also owns California-based craft beer maker Anchor Brewing, which it purchased in 2017. A small amount of its Sapporo Premium beer sold in the US is currently brewed through contract manufacturing, and the rest is imported from Canada and Vietnam.
The North American market contributed about one-fifth of the company’s alcoholic beverage sales of ¥285.4 billion (US$2.63 billion) last year. About 70 percent of its overseas beer brand, Sapporo Premium, was sold in the US and Canada.
Beer makers worldwide have been hit hard by the pandemic, as the virus upended how consumers dine out and drink. That meant beer and alcohol sales to restaurants dropped off, while canned drinks sold through retail channels did well.
While Sapporo’s alcohol sales fell 13.6 percent last year, the North America unit’s sales decrease of 5.3 percent was much smaller by comparison and the segment’s profit also grew.
The fall was stemmed partially by a larger contribution from store sales, as more drinkers shopped for home consumption.
Sales actually grew in Canada, where about 90 percent of its beer sales are through retail channels, Nose said.
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his
ADVERSARIES: The new list includes 11 entities in China and one in Taiwan, which is a local branch of Chinese cloud computing firm Inspur Group The US added dozens of entities to a trade blacklist on Tuesday, the US Department of Commerce said, in part to disrupt Beijing’s artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing capabilities. The action affects 80 entities from countries including China, the United Arab Emirates and Iran, with the commerce department citing their “activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy.” Those added to the “entity list” are restricted from obtaining US items and technologies without government authorization. “We will not allow adversaries to exploit American technology to bolster their own militaries and threaten American lives,” US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said. The entities
Minister of Finance Chuang Tsui-yun (莊翠雲) yesterday told lawmakers that she “would not speculate,” but a “response plan” has been prepared in case Taiwan is targeted by US President Donald Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which are to be announced on Wednesday next week. The Trump administration, including US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, has said that much of the proposed reciprocal tariffs would focus on the 15 countries that have the highest trade surpluses with the US. Bessent has referred to those countries as the “dirty 15,” but has not named them. Last year, Taiwan’s US$73.9 billion trade surplus with the US
Prices of gasoline and diesel products at domestic gas stations are to fall NT$0.2 and NT$0.1 per liter respectively this week, even though international crude oil prices rose last week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) said yesterday. International crude oil prices continued rising last week, as the US Energy Information Administration reported a larger-than-expected drop in US commercial crude oil inventories, CPC said in a statement. Based on the company’s floating oil price formula, the cost of crude oil rose 2.38 percent last week from a week earlier, it said. News that US President Donald Trump plans a “secondary