The Nikkei newspaper site reports on a new survey from the Fukuoka office of survey company Teikoku Databank, this time covering sake breweries in Kyushu, southernmost of the four main islands, and the tropical archipelago of Okinawa.
Companies with total sales of around JPY 16.5 billion in 2017 were surveyed, and the number who reached that threshold had increased by 4% compared to five years previously.
The 83 companies surveyed gained over 50% of their sales revenue from sake. Of those, 76 had made comparable progress. Average revenue for the 76 was JPY 16.48 billion, compared to 15.83 in 2012, showing an upward trend credited to the increasing domestic popularity of tokutei meisho-shu (特定名所酒, sake with a legal classification) and exports.
The breakdown of companies by prefecture was as follows:
- Fukuoka: 30
- Saga: 22
- Ōita: 14
- Kumamoto: 9
- Nagasaki: 7
- Miyazaki: 1
No companies in Kagoshima or Okinawa met the sales requirement, and the companies that did were clustered in the north of Kyushu.
The survey also looked at when the companies were founded. The oldest, Oga Shuzo in Fukuoka Prefecture, dated from 1673 while 42% of all breweries were founded in the Edo Period (1603 – 1868). Over 88% of breweries were over 100 years old.
Links
- Original article (Japanese, Nikkei newspaper, 21 September 2018)