Japanese manufacturers bet on coffee farming as global prices soar
Nichibei United has planted over 1,100 Typica trees in Okayama, joining a rush of Japanese firms betting on coffee farming as bean prices stay elevated.
Nichibei United Corp. has planted more than 1,100 Typica coffee trees in eight greenhouses in Soja, Okayama Prefecture, turning an Osaka energy trading company into a coffee grower as global bean prices stay elevated. The company entered coffee farming in 2024 and aims to sell the harvest later as ultra-premium coffee produced entirely in Japan.
Flooding forced Nichibei to replant after it installed underground drainage pipes, and the company keeps greenhouse coffee between 18 C and 24 C, which adds spending on shade nets and heaters.
Ishizuka Glass Co. has made a similar move in Aichi Prefecture, starting coffee farming in spring 2025 under a three-year trial. The glassmaker is growing about 10 types of coffee beans and is using roughly 300 C waste heat from its glass melting process to produce hot water for greenhouse heating.
Yamako Farm Co., Japan’s largest coffee seedling supplier, has sold 10,000 seedlings to about 60 businesses at 50,000 yen each and receives several hundred inquiries at business fairs. Yamako Farm Co.'s president estimates the business needs more than 100 million yen in investment to become profitable. Cultivation attempts are also moving into colder areas such as Hokkaido and the Tohoku region.
Land suitable for Arabica coffee could shrink by 50% by 2050, an international coffee research institution projects, even as Japan remained the world’s fourth-largest coffee consumer in 2023 with per-capita consumption of about 3.5 kilograms a year. The United States Department of Agriculture forecast in December 2025 that world coffee production in 2025/26 would reach a record 178.8 million 60-kilogram bags, with consumption at 173.9 million and ending stocks falling to 20.1 million for a fifth straight year, while the International Coffee Organization's monthly composite price index has nearly tripled over the same period.
UCC Ueshima Coffee Co. directly manages coffee estates in Jamaica and Hawaii, and those were the first directly operated coffee estates in Japan’s coffee industry. Blue Mountain coffee is produced in limited quantities and almost the entire crop was once exported to Japan, even though it accounted for only 1% of the coffee beans consumed nationwide.
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