Yakult’s International Business Manager Sees U.S. Volume Gains

Junichi Shimada, general manager of the international business department at Yakult Honsha Co. (2267), comments on boosting sales in the U.S. in an interview June 27.

“There are offers from supermarkets in the U.S. about selling Yakult products. If the sales increase at the current pace, 200,000 products per day will be in sight.”

Yakult sold 125,000 milk products per day in the U.S. in 2011, up 17 percent from a year earlier.

“There is a growing interest in the benefit of taking in good bacteria in the U.S. The idea is infiltrating gradually.”

“Myanmar and Cambodia are attractive areas to enter in Indochina. However, nothing has been decided at this point.”

Yakult will start to build a factory in California this year, which begins production from 2013. Sales in the Americas account for about 12 percent of total revenue.

To contact the reporter on this story: Yuki Yamaguchi in Tokyo at yyamaguchi10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anjali Cordeiro at acordeiro2@bloomberg.net;