Search Results for: japan

BY JULIAN RYALL

JAPANESE drinks giant Kirin has set up a new company that will focus its efforts on the soft drinks sector. Shinshu Beverage has been established as a 100% subsidiary of Kirin Holdings.

Under the deal, an existing subsidiary named Nagano Tomato Co.…

By Karryn Miller, International News Services

Inter-racial marriages may be on the rise throughout Asia but they still hold a minority position. Homogenous countries like Japan and Korea are slowly adapting to the idea of mixed families but legally and socially there is room for improvement. In these countries acceptance of multicultural couplings goes from one extreme to other being both a source of glamour and a point of discrimination.

In Japan a popular reality TV series “Okusama wa Gaikokujin” (literally my wife is a foreigner) held a prime-time spot in 2006 and 2007. Each episode focused on a mixed family and how the foreign wife coped with Japanese life. The series may have sated Japanese people’s curiosity about intercultural couples but in the process it separated inter-racial marriages from other marriages making them appear novel, different, and sometimes even strange.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

According to the US department of agriculture (USDA), about 70% of the 2.5 billion litres of fruit and vegetable juices sold in Mexico in 2009 were produced domestically. Mexico exported USdollar USD266.99 million worth of juices in 2009, compared to USD308.23 million in 2008 and USD247.29 million in 2007, according the UN Comtrade database.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

ACCORDING to the Korean Paint & Printing Industry Cooperative (KPIC), South Korean paint and coatings sales hit US$3 billion in 2008, up 4% from the previous year. KPIC accredited the boost to an increase in sale prices due to higher raw material costs, rather then profits however.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD, ALAN OSBORN and KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN automakers will be looking to boost exports to the Mercosur countries of South America, if they strike a trade deal with the European Union (EU). A resumption of negotiations on slashing tariffs for goods traded between the EU’s 27 member countries and the four-country Mercosur block, (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay), has been announced by the European Commission, the EU’s executive.…

BY KARRYN MILLER

AS one of the world’s leading economic powers, Japan will be in a unique position if it adopts, as planned, international financial reporting standards (IFRS). If successful, on one hand, it could give the US the final push it needs to dovetail its financial reporting with global accounting standards; on the other, if things don’t work out, America may retreat back towards US GAAP.…

BY JULIAN RYALL, FLORENCE LABEDAYS, KARRYN MILLER and KEITH NUTHALL

DESPITE the slow progress to replace the Kyoto Protocol, auto manufacturers are well aware that they will come under increasing pressure to reduce the CO2 emissions of their models and their manufacturing process.…

BY ALAN OSBORN, KARRYN MILLER, WANG FANGQING and GAVIN BLAIR

What’s the attraction of drinks own brands or private labels for the retailers? After all, if consumers are happy with commercial ‘national’ brands – then retailers can make money. "They exist because supermarkets are trying to build their supermarket values and their own relationship with their customers," says Richard Hall, chairman and founder of the international food and drink consultants Zenith International.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

While most of the alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages produced in Brazil are consumed domestically, the exception is the juice sector. Brazil is one of the world’s top three producers of tropical fruit, according to Brazilian Fruits Institute (IBRAF), and an important global provider of fruit juice.…

BY KARRYN MILLER, ALAN OSBORN, WANG FANGQING and GAVIN BLAIR

THE BENEFIT of own label or private label food products to retailers is that they can use these lines to boost their own reputations for quality and good value, and then that improved reputation in turn generates more sales of own brand products.…