Beam Suntory CEO rides whiskey boom at home and abroad
CHICAGO - "The great American export story that is bourbon" is how Matt Shattock, the soft-spoken native Brit at the helm of Beam Suntory, begins to describe his company's growing presence in the Land of the Rising Sun.
This year, Chicago-based Beam Suntory - a private subsidiary of the Japanese firm Suntory Holdings - expects to sell more than 8 million bottles of its flagship Jim Beam bourbon in Japan, up from just 300,000 bottles in 2012, prior to Suntory's $16 billion acquisition of Beam in 2014.
By 2020, when the Tokyo Olympics commence, Japan likely will have surpassed Australia as the largest export market for the global spirits company.
"That's just an extraordinary acceleration,"
