The Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported on Wednesday (14) that Japan’s leading food manufacturer Kagome (カゴメ, KAGOME) will abandon the use of tomatoes produced in Xinjiang within this year. In response to media inquiries, Kagome admitted that the decision was made in consideration of cost, quality, and human rights issues. The report highlights that Kagome’s decision is the first time a major Japanese company has terminated a deal because of the Xinjiang issue. This move may in turn affect the orientation of other Japanese companies.
The Nihon Keizai Shimbun quoted Kagome as saying that the company is in the process of confirming whether tomatoes purchased from Xinjiang in the past were produced in violation of human rights. Kagome has been using tomatoes from Xinjiang as raw materials, which are churned and then processed to make ketchup. However, due to a decrease in supply in recent years, tomatoes from Xinjiang now account for less than one hundredth of the total tomatoes used by Kagome. In fact, Kagome stopped importing Xinjiang tomatoes as early as last year. In addition, the Chinese market only accounts for 0.4% of Kagome’s total sales, so the abandonment of Xinjiang products will have little material impact.
As a manufacturer and distributor of tomato-based food and fruit juices, Kagome’s main product is “Wild Life 100 vegetable juice,” which was introduced to the market in 1995, and its eggplant juice also sells very well in Japan, the report said.
China reportedly produces 35 percent of the world’s tomatoes, and the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has always been a source of high-quality tomatoes due to the right climate. Xinjiang tomatoes are less juicy, making them ideal for processing into ketchup. Ketchup using Xinjiang tomatoes as a raw material has about a quarter of the global market share. At a time when Xinjiang cotton is being boycotted, organizations are also calling on countries to simultaneously ban the use of Xinjiang tomatoes and their products. When U.S. authorities introduced sanctions related to Xinjiang in January, they banned the import of Xinjiang tomatoes and their manufactured products in addition to Xinjiang cotton.
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