Japanese are going bananas

JAPANESE banana imports are headed for a second straight record gain this year, fueled by fad diets and households looking for cheap food amid the recession.

Imports of the fruit, mostly of the Cavendish or Señorita varieties, rose 34 percent from a year earlier to 540,000 tons in the five months to May, after totaling a record 1.09 million tons in 2008, according to finance ministry data.

Sales of bananas boosted Japan’s consumer spending by 77.7 billion yen ($840 million) in the fiscal year ended in March, according to Toshihiro Nagahama, chief economist at Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute, who cited “a growing tendency among households to save money, as well as the diet boom.”

The banana boom began in the spring last year after the release of a book called The Morning Banana Diet, which has sold 950,000 copies, according to Yukari Nagano, a spokesman at publisher Bunkasha Inc.

Japanese concern about their expanding waistlines grew after the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare last year mandated check-ups for company employees to catch early signs of metabolic syndrome.

The calorie content of a banana is 86 kilocalories, compared with 252 kilocalories for a bowl of rice, according to the Japan Banana Importers Association.

Dole Japan, a unit of Dole Food Co. and the largest banana importer in Japan, expects the trend to help boost its total revenue by 5 percent this year from a record 70.8 billion yen it earned in 2008, when it imported 330,000 tons of bananas.

“Bananas are affordable and we think import demand will grow,” said Hiromi Ohtaki, an executive marketing specialist at the company.

“Booms usually only continue to two or three months, but this time it’s protracted and unexpected.”

More than 90 percent of Japan’s banana imports come from the Philippines, where Sumitomo Corp. has been operating farms through a joint venture with a local partner for 40 years. The company’s imports increased 27 percent from a year earlier to 260,000 tons last year, bringing its market share to 26 percent.

“We are gradually expanding planting of new trees in the Philippines, aiming to win the top market share within two to three years,” said Katsuhiko Nishikubo, Sumitomo’s fruit import team leader.

The popularity of bananas pushed up wholesale prices by 8 percent in 2008 to 149 yen per kilogram. That’s still cheaper than 195 yen per kilogram for tangerines and 212 yen for apples, and makes the produce appealing as consumers worry about job security and incomes.

Japan’s jobless rate rose to a five-year high of 5.2 percent in May, and wages dropped for a 12th month, the longest streak of declines in five years.

Sumitomo’s profit related to bananas quadrupled to 1.7 billion yen in the fiscal year ended March 31, compared with total group net profit of 215.1 billion yen.

“Profits from bananas were just a small portion of the total, but having marketing routes for bananas leads to derivative businesses for supermarkets,” said Hiroshi Sakurai, senior analyst of Mizuho Investors Securities Co. in Tokyo. –Ichiro Suzuki, Bloomberg