Kirin Holdings

Kirin Holdings Company, Limited started life as the Japan Brewery Company in Yokohama back in 1885. The men behind it, William Henry Talbot and Edgar Abbott, bought up the assets of a failed brewery run by Norwegian-American William Copeland. Copeland had opened the Spring Valley Brewery in 1870, but it went under in 1884. Talbot and Abbott took his recipes and equipment, and in 1888 they released Kirin Beer, named after the mythical qilin creature that brings good fortune. That first brew was a lager, and it stuck. In 1907 the business got reorganized as the Kirin Brewery Company, which kept making beer for exactly a century before turning into a holding company in 2007.

Today Kirin Holdings runs a stable of operating subsidiaries. Kirin Brewery Company handles beer, with flagships like Kirin Ichiban, an all-malt beer that launched in 1990 and still uses the first-press method they call Ichiban Shibori. Kirin Beverage Company takes care of soft drinks, including the lemon soda Kirin Lemon, the carbonated fruit line Mets, the iced tea Gogo no Kōcha, and the canned coffee FIRE. Mercian Corporation, another subsidiary, produces wine and spirits. And then there's Kyowa Kirin, the pharmaceutical arm that develops drugs and health products. The group also owns Lion, an Australian brewer, and has a partnership with Brooklyn Brewery in the US.

Kirin is a core member of the Mitsubishi Group keiretsu, which means it's loosely tied to a network of Mitsubishi-related companies, but it's publicly traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under ticker 2503. No single entity owns a majority, though institutional investors and Mitsubishi affiliates hold significant stakes. The company's headquarters sit in Nakano, Tokyo, and its products reach over 50 countries. In the Japanese beer market, Kirin holds roughly a 30 to 35 percent share, trailing Asahi at around 40 percent but ahead of Sapporo's 15 percent. For fiscal 2022, Kirin reported revenue of ¥1.97 trillion, about US$14.5 billion, and net income of ¥116.8 billion.[edit]