Monday 01 August 2022 1:15 pm | Updated: Monday 01 August 2022 2:39 pm

Bosses at beer giant Kirin fear greater alcohol regulation amid healthcare push

(L-R) President of Orion Breweries Fumihiro Nakamura, President and COO of Asahi Breweries Hitoshi Ogita, President and Representative Director of Sapporo Breweries Masaru Fukunaga, President of Suntory, Nobutada Saji and President and COO Kirin Brewery, Kazuyasu Kato attend a press conference to promote a beer week “Beerden Week” on February 13, 2007 in Tokyo, Japan. The five Japanese beer makers gathered together to cooperate to set up an annual Beer Week for the end of May to try to boost the declining beer market in Japan where the annual consumption of beer per capita has decreased from 70 liters to 35 liters over the last 10 years from 1996 to 2004. (Photo by Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

Japanese beer giant Kirin has continued its push into healthcare, as bosses fear that heightened regulation in the sector looms.

The Tokyo-based brewer in March announced it would be pumping £667m into the pharmaceutical pivot over the next three years, in hopes of generating £3.1bn in healthcare sales over the next decade.

“I feel that more regulations are to come, and future of the beer business will probably be very difficult,” Takeshi Minakata, head of the health science at Kirin, told Bloomberg today.

“There is a certain risk to continue to rely on the alcohol industry forever.”

Minakata added that “handling microorganisms is in Kirin’s DNA”, which gives the company’s healthcare division “a really high potential.”

CEO Yoshinori Isozaki told the Financial Times earlier this year that his goal is to turn Kirin into a fermentation biotechnology company, suggesting its beer segment will not grow forever.

Kirin first made the jump into the healthcare sector in the 1980s. The company has already doubled down on its dietary supplements, made via fermentation technology.