Japan’s plummeting birthrate has led a diaper manufacturer to stop making them for babies at home and instead ramp up production for adults, the company said on Tuesday.
Oji Holdings is to wrap up domestic output of infant diapers in September, after production dropped from a 2001 peak of about 700 million annually to 400 million today.
“Demand for baby diapers is decreasing because of factors including the falling birthrate,” a spokesman said.
Photo: AP
They are to continue to be sold in Japan until stocks run out.
The number of births in Japan dropped to a new low last year, with more than twice as many deaths as new babies.
The spokesman said Oji Holdings would boost production of the sanitary items for adults in the country, anticipating their use mainly in facilities like nursing homes.
Japan has the world’s oldest population after Monaco, and the market for adult diapers is “expected to grow domestically,” the company said in a statement on Monday.
Oji Holdings, which also makes other paper products, said it would “maintain and expand” baby diaper production and sales overseas, including in Indonesia and Malaysia, citing expectations of growth there.
In Japan, births in last year fell for the eighth consecutive year to 758,631, a drop of 5.1 percent, preliminary data showed last month. The number of deaths stood at 1,590,503.
The nation is facing growing labor shortages, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has vowed policies including financial aid for families, easier childcare access and more parental leave to try and boost the birthrate.
Airlines in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore yesterday canceled flights to and from the Indonesian island of Bali, after a nearby volcano catapulted an ash tower into the sky. Australia’s Jetstar, Qantas and Virgin Australia all grounded flights after Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki on Flores island spewed a 9km tower a day earlier. Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia, India’s IndiGo and Singapore’s Scoot also listed flights as canceled. “Volcanic ash poses a significant threat to safe operations of the aircraft in the vicinity of volcanic clouds,” AirAsia said as it announced several cancelations. Multiple eruptions from the 1,703m twin-peaked volcano in
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
Farmer Liu Bingyong used to make a tidy profit selling milk but is now leaking cash — hit by a dairy sector crisis that embodies several of China’s economic woes. Milk is not a traditional mainstay of Chinese diets, but the Chinese government has long pushed people to drink more, citing its health benefits. The country has expanded its dairy production capacity and imported vast numbers of cattle in recent years as Beijing pursues food self-sufficiency. However, chronically low consumption has left the market sloshing with unwanted milk — driving down prices and pushing farmers to the brink — while
RSS