Japan's Vending Machine Industry Declines 2%

TOKYO -- Revenue generated by vending machines in Japan slid 2.1% to about 5.3 trillion yen ($67 billion) in 2011 as the number of machines on location declined 2.4% to 5,084,340 units. Data on the Japanese vending market were released last month by the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association (JVMA).

Not unlike the market in the U.S., vending machine revenue in Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has been declining over the past decade. In 2001, JVMA estimated that there were about 5.6 million vending machines in Japan that generated 7.1 trillion yen ($90 billion).

Last year's magnitude 9 earthquake northeast of Tokyo and the ensuing tsunami damaged and destroyed many machines in the coastal region devastated by the wave, but seemed to have had minimal impact on Japan's vending industry overall. Following the disasters that hit on March 11, JVMA secretary general Takashi Kurosaki said he was endeavoring to assess their impact on the industry. In general, Japan's economic recovery has been slow, and vending has not been an exception.

Beverage machines are the dominant vending category in Japan. In 2011, 2.15 million soft drink machines posted 1.9 trillion yen ($24 billion). Machines dispensing coffee, milk, beer and sake round out Japan's beverage category, and collectively they represented about 361 billion yen ($4.6 billion).

Japan's food vending machines earned 74.1 billion yen ($944 million).

Machines dispensing tobacco products have survived in Japan, but the category's installed base has been reduced by almost 50% over the past decade. In 2011, an estimated 327,500 tobacco machines generated 590 billion yen ($7.5 billion).

In 2008, cigarette machines in Japan began verifying a patron's age by reading a smart card called taspo. Purchases of cigarettes and other tobacco products can only be made by those in possession of the card, issued to adult applicants (which in Japan is 20 years of age). The card is held up to a sensor after money is inserted into the machine. Some beer and sake vending machines also require age verification.

As part of its annual study, JVMA classifies additional vending categories as ticket, "other" and automatic service machines.

Last year, there were 17,000 ticket-to-ride and 24,000 meal-ticket machines operating in Japan. Together, these high-denomination categories represented almost 1.9 trillion yen ($24 billion) in sales through vending machines. (In Japan, vending machines are commonly used in casual restaurants to sell meal tickets; a restaurant patron purchases a ticket from a vender and presents it to a server who then prepares and serves the meal. Meal-ticket machines are called " shokkenki.")

Revenue generated by 860,040 "other" vending machines in 2011 totaled about 374 billion yen ($4.8 billion). Products in this segment include postal stamps, sundries, sanitary goods, cards, newspapers and magazines, and toys (similar to capsuled novelties in the U.S.), among others.

JVMA identifies automatic service machines as coin/bill changers, goods rental machines and coin lockers. Last year, there were almost 1.3 million of these machines operating in Japan, with coin lockers dominating the service category at 1.2 million earning more than 127 billion yen ($1.6 billion). Changers and rental machines are nonrevenue categories.

Type	Products	2011		Ratio to previous year		Share
		Number of machines (1)	Amount (2)	Number	Amount	Number	Amount
			\1,000	（％）	（％）	（％）	（％）
Beverage VM	Soft drink	2,146,600	1,895,447,800	98.4	96.4	42.2	35.7
	Milk	163,900	144,559,800	95.0	93.1	3.2	2.7
	Coffee in cup	184,800	159,667,200	92.6	88.0	3.6	3.0
	Beer,Sake	35,200	55,616,000	96.4	96.4	0.7	1.0
Beverage  VM Total		2,530,500	2,255,290,800	97.7	95.5	49.8	42.5
Food VM Total		74,100	58,087,140	98.1	98.3	1.5	1.1
Tobacco VM		327,500	589,500,000	89.2	98.5	6.4	11.1
Ticket VM	Ticket to ride	17,000	1,645,600,000	99.4	99.4	0.3	31.0
	Meal ticket	24,000	252,000,000	100.8	101.8	0.5	4.8
Ticket VM Total		41,000	1,897,600,000	100.2	99.7	0.8	35.8
Other VM	Postal stamps etc.	40	56,000	80.0	80.0	0.0	0.0
	Razor,tissue etc.	98,000	32,340,000	98.0	98.0	1.9	0.6
	Magazine,newspaper	7,000	7,000,000	101.4	103.0	0.1	0.1
	Sanitary goods	45,000	15,525,000	90.0	90.0	0.9	0.3
	Toys,cards ect.	710,000	319,500,000	98.6	98.6	14.0	6.0
Other VM Total		860,040	374,421,000	98.1	98.2	16.9	7.1
Vending Machine Total		3,833,140	5,174,898,940	97.0	97.6	75.4	97.6
Automatic Service Machine	Coin & bill changer	61,200	-	90.0		1.2
	Goods rental machine	20,000	-	90.9		0.4
	Coin Locker and others	1,170,000	127,413,000	100.4	110.5	23.0	2.4
Automatic Service Machine Total		1,251,200	127,413,000	99.7	110.5	24.6	2.4
Grand Total		5,084,340	5,302,311,940	97.6	97.9	100.0	100.0