Who will win the brewing battle between Japan and America?

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.

America consumes only around a fifth as much canned and bottled coffee as Japan does. But Americans are developing a taste for it. The market has expanded by 78% since 2014. Margins are more energising than in Japan. This should be a gift to ready-to-drink coffee’s Japanese pioneers. It hasn’t been.