Japanese drinks heavyweight Suntory Holdings is reportedly looking to produce and sell its spirits locally to protect the business against the impact of US tariffs.
In an interview with Reuters, president Nobuhiro Torii said: “The biggest challenge we may have is [the] spirits business. But almost 70% of our business is either in Japan or the United States, and we have a strong Bourbon brand in the United States. We have very strong Japanese brands in Japan.
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“So we will produce and try to sell locally. That’s the key strategy with the tariffs.”
Suntory’s US brands include Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark Bourbon. Its Japanese spirits include Hibiki, Yamazaki and Toki whisky.
Last week, US President Donald Trump issued new tariffs on imports into the US, which includes a 24% levy on products from Japan. These are due to come into force on 9 April.
The US leader also revealed a universal “baseline” tariff of 10% on all imports which came into play over the weekend.
Torii stepped into the president role on 25 March. Suntory announced his promotion from executive vice president in December, with CEO Takeshi Niinami relinquishing the president position and becoming chairman, while retaining his CEO duties.
“We always have challenges for how to control the supply and how to build up our liquid [business],” Torii told Reuters. “But, for the time being, I believe that the trend itself continues to grow, so of course we carefully watch the [consumer] trend but at the same time we have to create the demand, so we should focus on brand investment that our brand condition stay healthy.”
Last year, in an interview with Financial Times, Niinami reportedly said the business was planning to export fewer US goods to Europe, Mexico and Canada as it expected drinkers might avoid US brands as a result of of the tariffs threat.
“We laid out the strategic and budget plan for 2025 expecting that American
products, including American whiskey, will be less accepted by those countries
outside of the US because of first, tariffs and, second, emotion,” Niinami said at the time.
“Our plan is less exports from the US to other countries like [in] Europe, Mexico
and Canada.”
He added that the company needs “to be more focused on the US to sell American
whiskey”.
