Who will win the brewing battle between Japan and America?
Japanese-born canned coffee is conquering America. Its Japanese purveyors are not
IN THE 1970S Japan gave the world pocket calculators and the Walkman. A less well-known Japanese invention of the era was canned coffee. Fifty years on, the country remains the biggest consumer of ready-to-drink brews, guzzling 3.1bn litres per year, half the global total and enough to fill Tokyo’s new Olympic Stadium almost to the brim. As domestic sales slow—they fell by 12.5% in the five years to 2019, to $11.5bn—Japanese sellers of the stuff are looking abroad, and especially thirstily across the Pacific.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Caffeine clash”
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