TOKYO: Japan’s Ministry of Finance has released official import statistics for 2015, with bananas, pineapples and grapefruit leading fruit imports in terms of volume, while bananas, kiwifruit and avocados led in terms of value.
While the total volume of fruit imported dropped slightly from 1.596m tonnes in 2014 to 1.566m tonnes in 2015, the import value rose 19 per cent on the previous year to ¥101,901m.
Kiwifruit has been a rising star in Japan’s fresh fruit import market, accounting for 5 per cent in terms of quantity and 13.4 per cent in terms of value in 2015. Some 79,000 tonnes of kiwifruit was imported in 2015, worth ¥18,577m. Kiwifruit made “remarkable progress” in 2015, said Jack Moriya, president of leading Japanese trader Tokyo Seika.
“Kiwifruit promotions focusing on it nutritional value and health benefits of kiwifruit consumption has kept the kiwifruit market stable and on the rise,” Moriya said. “For Japanese retailers, better understanding of the price, supply and quality situation in advance has made it easier for them to manage and control; nevertheless, it is difficult to predict how Japanese consumers will react to future price increases.” Imports of bananas dropped from 10,79 thousand tonnes to 959,000 tonnes in 2015 after peaking during the banana diet craze of 2008/09.
