Japan’s biggest brewer Asahi trying to attract sober Generation Z

“We have realised that younger people are increasingly choosing not to drink as much alcohol,” said Atsushi Katsuki, the chief executive officer of Asahi Group Holdings.

However, Japan’s biggest brewer sees this as both a risk and an opportunity.

“Our firm is quite unique because while the majority of our sales comes from beer and alcoholic beverages, we also have the capability to produce non-alcoholic beverages or soft drinks which gives us a competitive advantage,” he said.

Asahi is also pushing its non-alcoholic and what it refers to as low alcohol offerings – such as alcohol-free beer or drinks with less than 3.5% alcohol – outside of its home market.

“By 2030, we want to double the share of beverages with zero or low alcohol to 20% of our overall beverage sales,” he said.

They are already popular in its home market. Mr Katsuki said that alcohol-free beers account for 10% of Asahi’s beverages sales in Japan as people avoid drink driving.

But the Japanese market is shrinking because of an ageing population and falling birth rates.

“Alcoholic beverages sales in Japan will continue to decline because we cannot go against the shrinking population, which means we cannot expect the Japanese market to grow massively,” he said.

That means Asahi’s main growth opportunities are overseas, and it has been expanding rapidly abroad for 15 years. Today, more than half of its sales are generated outside Japan.

One major market the firm has yet to tap is the US. The question is: can alcohol-free beer get as popular there as it is in Japan?