Our Medium-term Plan targets 25 to 30 billion yen in cost savings from improved efficiencies over the next three years.

 

In 2010, the plan's first year, we managed to reduce expenses by 13 billion yen, with cuts made to both variable and fixed costs. We plan to achieve further cuts this year by merging our Nishinomiya Brewery's operations into our Suita Brewery. This move is to be completed in September and will leave us with 8 operating breweries nationwide.

 

While we expect some upward pressure on input costs this year, we believe the benefits of merging plants, combined with improvements to production processes and reviews of all fixed costs, will enable us to achieve total cost reductions of 8.9 billion yen.

 

As for advertising and promotional spending, applications for our Super Dry Extra Cold campaign were greater than we had anticipated, and as a result we were not able to cut costs as much as planned. However, we will move forward with structural reform of our sales division. We think this will enable us to aim for cost efficiency improvements greater than those already planned.