Category Archives: business & strategy

Irish Food in Japanese Kitchens: Ireland’s Agricultural Partnership with Japan

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By Reece Hickey

In April 2025, Taoiseach Micheál Martin officially opened Ireland House Tokyo, the headquarters for Irish-Japanese trade and diplomacy in Japan. It houses the offices of various Irish organisations and state agencies such as the Irish Embassy, Bord Bia, Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland (Industrial Development Agency Ireland). The opening of Ireland House Tokyo has demonstrated the importance of the Japanese export market to Irish trade, particularly in the agricultural sector. 

Why do Japanese Consumers like Irish Food? 

Irish agricultural trade has become increasingly popular in Japan, with Japan now being the third largest consumer of Irish agri-food exports outside of Europe – Irish beef and pork, seafood, dairy and whiskey all highly sought after. In 2024 alone, €162 million worth of Irish food and drink products were exported to Japan. There are various reasons for this. 

Irish produce is considered among the highest quality in the world, particularly dairy and beef. Ireland’s mild and moist climate allows for a year-round grass-based agricultural system. This means that cows can graze on Ireland’s lush grass pastures for most of the year, making Ireland’s grass-fed meat and dairy especially flavourful and nutritious. 

Irish agri-food products are largely sustainably produced as well. Bord Bia has been a key player in recent years in ensuring that Irish produce is of high quality and is produced through environmentally sustainable means. This is done through auditing farms and food processing plants, as well as labelling their products with the Bord Bia Quality Assurance Mark. Irish produce carrying this mark indicates that it is safe, sustainably produced and fully traceable. 

These factors strongly appeal to Japanese consumers as they heavily prioritise the quality and freshness of their food. The aging population of Japan is also notably health-conscious and is willing to pay a premium price for high quality, safe and reliable food: a market niche well suited for Irish produce. 

The Success of Irish Food and Drink in the Japanese Market. 

One of the best performing Irish food exports in Japan has been beef offal (edible organs). Unlike in the Irish market, offal is a common sight on Japanese menus, with Irish beef tongue becoming quite a popular delicacy in Japan. One of the key customers for Irish beef tongue is restaurant chain “Negishi”, who sell it in over 40 restaurants across Japan, catering to approximately 100,000 customers each week. Last year, three high-end Japanese chefs were inducted into Bord Bia’s exclusive Chefs’ Irish Beef Club (CIBC). 

The CIBC is composed of chefs working in top restaurants and culinary institutions worldwide who share a passion for Irish beef. It already includes high-end chefs from across Europe and the Middle East. The CIBC has played a pivotal role in promoting Irish beef as a premium product in Japan. Inductee Chef Yuki Inoue, Head Chef at Ristorante La Bisboccia in Tokyo, said: “I’ve been using Irish beef at La Bisboccia for six years. We have served beef from all over the world, but Irish grass-fed beef stands up as the best, and our customers love it”. 

Irish whiskey brands such as Jameson, Redbreast and McConnell’s have also found success in Tokyo’s bars. In 2020, there were just 55,000 cases of Irish whiskey sold in Japan, a figure that has risen to more than 200,000 cases in 2024. The Irish Whiskey Association participated in a trade mission organised by the European Commission in Tokyo in June 2025. “Japan is a very exciting country for Irish whiskey, something that many companies are now discovering. There is a huge interest in the product, and a great affinity for Ireland”, said Eoin Ó Catháin, Director of the Irish Whiskey Association. 

Infrastructure, Legislation and Trade Missions – Groundwork for Success.

The Irish state purchased a site in Tokyo in 2017 for a centre of Irish trade and diplomacy, prior to the signing of the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement in 2019, which removed the majority of Japanese tariffs imposed on the EU. This site is now home to Ireland House Tokyo. With establishment costs totalling over €21 million, Ireland House Tokyo is the most expensive capital project the Irish state has ever invested in, outside of Ireland. This is justified, however, as bilateral trade between Ireland and Japan is now worth more than €21 billion per year and the volume of trade has doubled over the past decade. 

Accompanying the opening of this site was an extensive trade mission led by Bord Bia and Irish government ministers, which involved initiatives such as the aforementioned Chefs’ Irish Beef Club and participation in trade shows such as Foodex Japan, Japan’s biggest food and beverage exhibition. This trade mission established vital partnerships between Irish organisations and the Japanese agri-food sector. Another major part of the trade mission was Ireland’s participation at World Expo Osaka, where months of activities at the Expo were held to increase Ireland’s presence and visibility in Japan. 

2025 was a landmark year for the development of Irish-Japanese commerce. With key relationships built, crucial infrastructure constructed and vital trade agreements established, it is now time for Ireland to reap the benefits of its long-term investment in the Japanese market.

Can I Zip You? – Are Irish Banks Too Late to the Instant Transfer Revolution?

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By Sarah Renehan


The online platform Revolut, with an Irish customer base of three million people is finally
faced with a worthy rival in the Irish market, with the announcement of a new market entrant called
“Zippay”. Zippay, a feature being added to AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB’s online
banking apps, will allow customers to send, request, and spilt payments with other users
without the use of third-party applications. Zippay may be seen as directly challenging the
long established success of Revolut, but will such a feature take off or have the traditional
Irish banks left it too late to reclaim the instant transfer market segment?


What Makes Revolut So Successful?
Launched over 10 years ago as a fintech startup, Revolut was co-founded by Nikolay
Stornosky and Vlad Yatsenko, and has a current valuation of $75bn as of September 2025.
The platform began with the promise of transparent currency exchange and is now used by
individuals across 160 countries and regions worldwide. It’s feature of instant payment transfers,
with no sending fees amongst Revolut users, has revolutionized the online banking space. Since
its original launch, it as expanded into other markets, including insurance and savings
accounts with competitive rates of AER. Revolut adapts quickly to market changes, in 2018
becoming the first European fintech app to offer cryptocurrency trading for the likes of Bitcoin
and Litecoin, and over 10 million users have traded £45 billion since 2017.


Can Traditional Banks Compete?
Since Revolut’s establishment as a fully-fledged digital banking platform, traditional banks
have lagged behind by failing to launch competing features, ultimately hindering their
opportunity to gain a share in this new market. Zippay will only challenge one aspect of the
Revolut model, arguably the most used aspect of the model; the instant transfer
function. Despite the delay in action, Zippay has showcased potential to disrupt the market.
It will service 5 million potential Irish customers across the three banks, AIB, BOI, and
Permanent TSB, and will be backed by the perceived security that these banks offer.


Interestingly, the EU recently introduced legislation making SEPA Instant Payments
mandatory for all EU Payment Service Providers from the 9th of October 2025. This is a
system for making cashless payments which is used across the EU, a legislation which will allow banking customers to make instant transfers using IBANs; transfers which
previously took up to one business day, will now take moments. Ironically,  Zippay is built
on the previous SEPA payment system and not the SEPA instant payment system. This is due
to Zippay being built long before the announcement of this new legislation.


The slow response of the Irish banks in creating a rival has made their new platform feature
somewhat redundant even before its initial launch. As online banking users are now able to
send instant payments with SEPA through the use of IBANs, the convenience of instant payments is lost, and instead Zippay’s success relies on the convenience of allowing users to send money with just a phone number.
However, there are certainly some obstacles to the usage of this platform which may inconvenience users, with an example being Zippay’s sending limit of 1000 EUR per day, which is also dependent on individual bank transaction limits. Meanwhile, Revolut sees no funds transfer limit. Moving forward, it will be interesting to see how Zippay can compete with “Revolut Junior” a service which allows parents to open
accounts for their children which only they can deposit money into. This has proven to be
extremely popular, with over 400,000 of Revolut’s Irish customer base being under 18 years
of age.


Will the Delayed Response be Zippay’s Downfall?
In terms of business strategy, the traditional Irish banks may have left
joining the instant payments trend too late. In Eisenhardt & Martins article “Dynamic Capabilities:
What are They?” (2000), the idea of fast-moving markets and how a firm’s ability to sense,
seize, and reconfigure matters more than static advantage, and this theory can be applied in
the case of the Irish banks. Although the traditional banks offer high levels of security and
protection, and the new services which Zippay seeks to provide will eliminate the need for
topping up a digital wallet or downloading a separate app, they still lag behind their
competitors. In 2020, Irish banks attempted to launch a similar venture called “Yippay”,
and though it had never launched due to legislative restrictions and software issues, the concept of Yippay could have potentially offered a more adequate and timely rival to Revolut.


Ultimately only time will tell, we must wait until the 2026 launch of Zippay to truly gauge its
success. The odds, however, are not in it’s favour.