At JCCU's General Assembly held on June 16, SHIMADA Hiroyuki, Managing Director/CEO reported that in fiscal 2016 (April 2016-March 2017) consumer co-ops nationwide achieved an increase in both sales and surplus. This trend has continued for four consecutive years.

According to the business report, membership of the community-based retail co-ops for the fiscal 2016 was 21.07 million an increase of 2.1% compared with the previous year. The total business turnover obtained was 2.73 trillion JPY (101.3% year-on-year) and the ordinary surplus rate was 1.83% which is an extension of -0.14 point from the 2015 fiscal year.

The home delivery sales increased by 1.7% from the previous year to a value of 1.64 trillion JPY given an ordinary surplus rate of 3.49%. A new home delivery business model with the utilization of IT and improvement of delivery convenience through effective logistics distribution infrastructure advanced.

In the case of the store business, reform towards overcoming the store deficit was advanced. To improve profit and loss, non-profitable stores were closed while advancing on store renewal and new store openings. However, the retail sales amount for fiscal 2016 had only a marginal increase of 0.2% with a value of 922.4 billion JPY and a minus surplus rate of 1.28% which is 0.15 point below the previous year.
With regards to CO-OP Brand Products, JCCU launched a new series of its sub-brand CO-OP Quality products and strengthened the product capabilities through "Love CO-OP" campaign, which aims at raising members loyalty for the products.

However, in the fiscal 2016, CO-OP products sales reached a value of 371.6 billion JPY which is 1.2% less than the previous year. The ordinary surplus was 54.7 billion JPY.

Key Issues in 2017:
In 2017 fiscal year, together with the targets set forth in the 2nd three-year plan (2017-2019) of consumer co-ops nationwide, aiming to realize "Co-op Vision 2020", and JCCU's mid-term business policy (2017-2019), JCCU will fulfill its role as a national federation, to strengthen ties with co-ops nationwide in order to maintain suitable business structure that can further contribute to the realization of the ideals and vision of the co-op.
Priority Issue will include:

1. JCCU will support efforts to create a community where everyone can live in with a sense of security. We will support regional inclusive care system initiatives, disaster prevention and mitigation measures, promotion of comprehensive collaboration agreements including regional protection activities, efforts to improve understanding of dementia and share examples of initiatives across the country with the support of co-ops nationwide and local governments.
2. Management Issue: We will challenge organizational reforms, such as fundamentally reducing costs, reviewing work and organizational ways to reduce total workload and improving productivity, aiming for management targets under the medium-term business policy.
3. We will continue to promote initiatives to strengthen co-op product competitiveness through the advancement of managerial competencies and the reflection of co-op members’ opinion in co-op product development and improvement process to help maintain affordability of CO-OP Brand Products.
4. Securing and fostering young talent who will bear the future of co-op is also a major priority. While the talent shortage and aging are progressing, securing and fostering human resources in co-op is also a big task, and in this respect, JCCU in cooperation with the co-op nationwide will start “human resource support center " to help with information exchanges for recruiting capabilities, establishment of organizational revitalization, personnel exchanges between co-ops across the country, career development support for young talent and training of specialized human resources.
5. On retailing business, we shall also advance efforts in the use of subscription promotion portal to increase home delivery users and advance initiatives to provide information to members who request it via WEB. We shall also work towards improving the profitability of the store by strengthening the fresh food division.