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Japan’s most famous brand of potato chips will drain the colour from its packaging this month as the war in the Middle East squeezes supplies of petroleum-based colourants and manufacturers grapple with “ink-flation”.
Calbee, which produces half of Japan’s savoury snacks, plans to temporarily switch to black-and-white packaging for 14 products after disruption to oil flows out of the Gulf hit ink supplies, the company said on Tuesday.
Images of crisps and the brand mascot, an anthropomorphic potato unofficially known as Potato Boya, will also be dropped, images released by the company showed. Its Frugra fruit granola breakfast cereal, with its signature bright red branding, will also be affected by the measure.
Calbee said the marketing austerity, which will begin on May 25, was aimed at maintaining supplies for consumers of its much-loved products, which include Lightly Salted, Consommé Punch and Seaweed Salt flavours of crisps.
The plans were met with immediate resistance from the government, which insists that the country has ample supplies of printing ink, naphtha and synthetic resins despite the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Japan depends on the Middle East for more than 90 per cent of its crude oil.
Japan’s deputy chief cabinet secretary Kei Sato said that authorities “have not received any reports of immediate supply problems at this time, and we believe that necessary supplies for Japan as a whole are currently secure”.
Officials are due to hold talks with Calbee on Tuesday in order to “better understand the situation”.
Japan’s convenience stores, vending machines and supermarkets host a famously competitive battle for consumers’ attention, with constantly renewed product lines, and colourful, eye-catching packaging.
Some analysts said Calbee’s move bore the hallmarks of a public relations stunt designed to generate attention and show the company taking drastic measures before raising prices.
“Deliberately going that far to generate buzz is a very proactive way of turning this situation to their advantage from a marketing perspective,” said Akihito Nakai, an independent retail analyst.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has been at huge pains to offset rising prices and play down any disruption from the war in Iran.
Asked in parliament on Monday whether the government had any plans to curb consumption of petrol and other products in dwindling supply, Takaichi repeated that there was no need for the public to cut back.
But government figures released late last month showed the war has taken a toll on consumer confidence, with the two months since the start of conflict wiping out a year of gains.
Nicholas Smith, Japan strategist at CLSA, said that the decline in March and April was comparable in extent to the collapse in consumer confidence following the 2011 Tohoku quake and nuclear meltdown.
Shortages of naphtha, an oil-derived petrochemical used to make inks, paints and plastic packaging, have already stirred fears among Japanese businesses.
Hiroyuki Urata, president of food producer Itoham Yonekyu warned this month that “colourful packaging will become difficult”.
“Packaging may become simple, such as black-and-white designs,” he added.
The loss of colour packaging, or “dye-flation”, comes on top of “shrinkflation” measures aimed at protecting consumers from rising costs, analysts said.
Lawson, one of the country’s three major convenience store chains, is considering reducing the size of its own-label 600ml water bottles to limit plastic use.
Senior marketing executives at two of Japan’s largest soft-drinks companies said they were examining options including reducing labelling on plastic bottles to a quarter of the current size to cut costs.
Elsewhere, businesses have begun passing on higher costs to customers. Dry cleaners in Tokyo have introduced surcharges to cover soaring prices of detergent, plastic wrapping and clothes hangers.
