EU & Japan: EU planning to talk to Japan to open its beer market to European countries within free trade agreement

The European Union (EU) is planning to talk to Japan on opening the latter's beer market to the European countries prior to the signing of a free trade deal in 2015, Drinks Business Review reported on November 20.

The EU countries including France and Germany will ask Japan to alter rules controlling alcoholic beverage imports, as well as product specifications, Reuters reported.

The news agency quoted an EU document as saying: "For beer, the impact on trade is rather significant.

"Many of the European beers cannot be marketed as beers in Japan because of insufficient - according to the Japanese legislation - malt content or because they have some ingredients such as coriander."

The EU-Japan trade agreement is anticipated to increase economic output of both the countries by around 1%.

Said to be the world's third largest beer market in terms of profit generation, Japan is dominated by domestic producers such as Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo and Suntory.

Europeans have a negligible presence with joint ventures allowing local production of beers such as Heineken.

21 November, 2014