Sanpo-yoshi Communication

President's Column] Surrounding Population

Our main factory is located in a rural area far from the downtown area of Kurume City (a 20- to 30-minute drive). Since the site falls within an urban development control zone, we have faced difficulties expanding the factory over the past few years.

On top of that, we’ve recently been facing recruitment difficulties (especially for part-time positions). We just can’t attract enough people. I suppose it’s because the population in the surrounding area is declining. We’ve been improving benefits such as hourly wages, but I feel the situation is getting worse year by year. Population projections are accurate. Things are unlikely to improve from here on out. With the expansion of our factory, recruitment for our headquarters plant has now become one of our most critical management challenges. The city is also working to revitalize the downtown area and is encouraging people to concentrate there, so in a sense, this is unavoidable.

As far as new graduate hiring is concerned, thanks to our efforts, we’ve been able to hire a fair number of both college and high school graduates, so there’s no problem there. However, due to the nature of our business, there is a lot of light manual labor within the company, and we need a certain number of part-time workers. People often suggest that we should mechanize or automate these tasks, but it’s rare for anyone to propose groundbreaking labor-saving equipment that could bring innovation to a low-tech, declining industry like ours.

From now on, not only retail and foodservice businesses but also manufacturers will need to consider the surrounding population when selecting a location; otherwise, they risk disrupting production. Furthermore, I believe we have entered an era where even a single company is expected to collaborate with various local organizations and businesses and demonstrate a certain level of commitment to regional revitalization and increasing the local population.

Along with our efforts to enable production with fewer staff, we believe we must also take a more proactive role in ensuring the sustainability of our local community.