While Japan's household consumption of fruit has continued to fall, sales of kiwifruit in the north Asian nation are still on the rise.
The purchasing price of kiwifruit in Japan reached¥881 (US$7.95) per kg in April, the highest for any month since records began 12 years ago, according to data released by Japan’s Ministry of Finance.
Jack Moriya, president of leading importer Tokyo Seika, said this attributed to the reported rise in expenditure on the fruit, which reached an average of ¥113 (US$1.02) per household in April 2017. During that month, the average Japanese household consumed129g of kiwifruit.
This is up from ¥68 per household in 2007, when households were consuming around 93g of kiwifruit.
Consumption of grapes also peaked during the first quarter of the year, which historically has been stable at 0.01kg per household over each month of January, February and March.
In the past few years, however, grape consumption in March and April has increased, reaching 0.09kg per household in April 2017.
Consumption of grapefruit continues to drop, falling to 0.09kg per household in April 2017, down from its peak of 0.48kg per household in 2007.
Overall household consumption of fruit has continued on the downward trend at 5.19kg per household in April 2017, down from 5.6kg per household in April 2007.
