Japan’s ‘ice cream cartel’

Summer is “a boom time for ice cream makers”, said Agence France-Presse – but in Japan, some of the country’s biggest firms are feeling the heat.

Officials from the Japan Fair Trade Commission (JFTC) have raided six firms on suspicion of colluding to hike prices in a cartel. Staff are believed to have “sent emails or met up for years to coordinate the timing and size” of the increases, said an anonymous source, violating anti-monopoly laws.

The anti-trust watchdog searched the head offices of Meiji, Morinaga Milk Industry, Lotte, Ezaki Glico, Morinaga & Co and Akagi Nyugyo, company officials have confirmed.

Prices ‘jumped in lockstep’

Since 2022, ice cream prices in Japan have risen every year around the same time, as heat and inflation climb. In the fiscal year ending in March, ice cream sales hit a record high of 663 billion yen (about £3.1 billion), according to the Japan Ice Cream Association, as the country sweated through its hottest summer since records began.

Now, the commission is investigating whether major manufacturers colluded to take advantage of inflation and raise their prices above the increase in the cost of raw ingredients, according to Kyodo News.

Sources say the six companies are “suspected of raising the suggested retail prices of ice cream” in increments of 10 yen, according to The Japan Times. The aim seems to be “securing profits for each company”.

Public broadcaster NHK used a graph to show how “the price of two flagship frozen delights” – Meiji’s ice cream and Morinaga Milk’s choco-ice bites – “jumped in lockstep four times” between 2022 and 2025, said The Guardian. Sources say this is the first JFTC investigation into a “suspected ice-cream-related price cartel”. The case has provoked anger among “frozen snack aficionados as they face a cruel summer ahead”.

Japan’s “sweltering and sweaty summers” are being intensified by the climate crisis. In April, authorities announced a new term for days reaching more than 40C – kokusho, meaning “cruelly hot”.

The ice cream ‘boom’

The case “threatens to undermine the reputations” of some of Japan’s largest food companies, said The New York Times. The ice cream industry has “boomed in recent years”. Last year, it was valued at more than $4 billion, up 3% from 2024.

But rising prices have “stoked public anger” in Japan, which is battling inflation for “the first time in decades”, fuelled by higher energy costs from the war in the Middle East.

The companies have issued statements saying the commission had raided their offices and that they “would cooperate with the investigation”. Natsuyo Suzuki, of Akagi Nyugo, said the firm would work with investigators following an “on-site inspection”.

The JFTC will analyse seized materials and interview individuals to investigate the suspected violation of antimonopoly laws. But if the commission “concludes that there was a cartel”, said AFP, the antitrust watchdog will “order the firms to improve their business practices and pay a fine”.