Japanese brewer expansion strategies

For many years, leading Japanese alcohol producers have been broadening their horizons to other countries and products.

The recent announcement by Suntory that it wants to speed up its overseas expansion through “an aggressive merger and acquisition strategy” led to some interesting insights from a Nomura analyst in the Financial Times:

• Japanese “drinks groups would prefer to buy beer companies overseas but, as none are available, they are going after non-alcoholic beverage companies.”
• “Kirin’s profit margin in its domestic non-beer drinks business was less than 2%, while Asahi’s was about 3%.”