While nurturing a Western liquor culture involving beverages such as whisky and liqueurs over the years, Suntory has also marketed bottled cocktails and canned chu-hi (shochu hi-balls) to enjoy in relaxed circumstances. We have repeatedly combined engineering skills developed in our liquor and general foods businesses to introduce products with new value. These have included The Cocktail Bar, which brought the flavor of authentic bar cocktails into the home; Super Chu-hi, which ignited the canned chu-hi market; Calori and Cocktail Calori, products that created a new "low calorie" category; -196°C, a chu-hi employing "freeze-crush infusion"^*1 (FCI) to capture the freshness of fruit; and Ginza Cocktail, a product with a full "fruitiness" developed in collaboration with long-established fruit importer Ginza Sembikiya Co.

Calori, Cocktail Calori, -196°C, -196°C Strong Zero, Ginza Cocktail

-196°C Zero Dry

Recent additions to the line-up include -196°C Zero Dry, the first chu-hi with zero sugar content^*2, which we launched in 2008, and Horoyoi, a mild-tasting, "semi-sparkling" chu-hi with alcohol content reduced to 3% to appeal to young people who are increasingly turning away from alcoholic beverages, which followed in 2009. We are continually creating new markets by developing one next-generation chu-hi one after another.

Horoyoi

Looking to the future, we will continue to bring a flexible approach and challenging spirit to our product development, and to maintain our tradition of constantly introducing new value that inspires customers.

*1 A new chu-hi production process involving infusion of instantaneously frozen and crushed fruits into alcohol at -196° Celsius

*2 Zero sugar content is indicated as less than 0.5 g per 100 ml, according to official nutritional labeling standards