17th International Logistics Total Expo 2026 (LTT2026) exhibitor series, Part 9
We want to take Japanese products overseas. When someone brings us that, the conversation almost always starts with how to ship them. What actually stops the project is usually something else.
Who holds the inventory?
Until now this series has looked at the things on display. This time it is a service. And because our own company works in the same area, unlike the earlier parts, we write this one with ourselves as the subject.
First, the line the Warehousing Business Act draws
"Using a warehouse" splits into two things in law. Article 2(2) of Japan's Warehousing Business Act defines the warehousing business as "the business of storing, in a warehouse, goods received in deposit."
The assessment material distributed by the District Transport Bureaus of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism opens with this question — "Is it a business that receives payment for taking responsibility for storing another person's goods?"
If the answer is yes, the operation is a commercial warehouse and requires registration with the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Article 3). The registration categories are class 1, class 2, class 3, open-yard, water-surface, silo/tank, hazardous goods, refrigerated, trunk room and special warehouses. A refrigerated warehouse, for instance, must hold 10°C or below at all times. The types of goods you may keep are also fixed per category.
A self-use warehouse — keeping your own goods yourself — is not a warehousing business. The same building holding the same cargo needs a different registration depending on whose goods they are.
The integrated-logistics exhibits at LTT2026 — four ways of taking the work on
| How the work is taken on | What is received from the client |
|---|---|
| ① Own the means of carriage | A leg of the transport |
| ② Put the border crossing in one hand | The process from purchase to local delivery |
| ③ A place to put it, plus in-warehouse work | Storage and the hands-on steps |
| ④ Specialise by product category | The procedures specific to that category |
① Own the means of carriage — air, rail containers, RORO vessels, ferries, sea-and-land combinations. Against the shortage of truck drivers, proposals that shift away from road haulage lined the floor. Exhibits leading with low CO2 emissions also stood out.
② Put the border crossing in one hand — purchasing on the client's behalf, receiving and inspection at a warehouse, consolidation, sea and air transport, customs-clearance support, and delivery inside the destination country. The shape is one company taking the whole chain without cutting it. The problem statement — logistics split across several providers that the client wants unified — came up again and again.
③ A place to put it, plus in-warehouse work — storage along with value-added processing, e-commerce fulfilment and contracted in-warehouse operations. Some exhibits led with their warehouse category, and some presented hazardous-goods or temperature-controlled warehousing as their speciality.
④ Specialise by product category — this was the clearest of the four. For food imports, the import notification for food, laboratory analysis and the handling of tariffs under an EPA were raised as concrete questions; for cosmetics logistics, compliance with the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act was presented alongside storage and processing. Some exhibitors specialised in medical devices, chemicals or storage batteries.
What all four had in common
All four take the form of holding the client's cargo and moving it on the client's behalf. The steps can be split, recombined, and consolidated into one hand.
But the owner of the cargo stays the client to the end. So the client keeps carrying the question of whether it sells.
This is usually where an overseas company trying to handle Japanese products stops. The shipping can be solved; who buys the first lot cannot.
We buy
As a trading and distribution company, we purchase Japanese food, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals ourselves and distribute them to companies abroad. That is a fifth shape against the four above.
Because we buy, the inventory becomes ours. On that basis we store it, inspect it, and arrange shipment.
From the legal side, this is not a deposit. We keep our own goods ourselves, so it is not a warehousing business. What we move is our own cargo, so it is not a business of carrying goods received from others either. We do not sell a storage service or a transport service. What we sell is goods.
For the client, the difference comes down to a single point — who absorbs what does not sell. Under a deposit, the client does. Under a purchase, we do.
Each product category stands on a different law
And this is where "Japanese products" cannot be treated as one thing.
| Category | Main issues that arise separately |
|---|---|
| Food | Import notification for food, labelling, whether an EPA applies |
| Cosmetics | The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Act. Where storage and labelling happen changes which licence category is needed |
| Quasi-drugs and pharmaceuticals | The same Act. Treatment differs by item |
| Refrigerated (10°C or below) | Holding the temperature band. Under the Warehousing Business Act this falls in the refrigerated-warehouse category |
At the show as well, food importing and cosmetics logistics were presented as separate services. Even exhibitors selling unification do not unify the product categories.
Which licence you need is decided by the combination of the product and of what is done where. Only storing it, or applying labels, or repacking into smaller units. For the same product, adding a step changes the category required. This is a place to check before saying "we can do it."
Contact
If you want to handle Japanese products but holding the first lot on your own books is too heavy, that is the stage to talk to us.
Tell us what, roughly how much per month, and to which country, and we will come back with whether we can purchase it and which procedures arise for each category. We do not disclose information about our suppliers, but we can answer whether we are able to handle an item.
What we do is purchasing and distributing goods. We do not provide storage or transport as services that require registration under the Warehousing Business Act or the Cargo Utilisation Transport Business Act. International freight forwarding is in preparation, and for now we can only accept enquiries about it.
Primary sources
- Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism — Warehousing Business Act
- Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism — Guide to registration applications for the warehousing business
- MLIT Chugoku District Transport Bureau — How to judge whether an operation is a warehousing business
The descriptions of exhibits in this article organise trends from the exhibit information published by the organiser and from public information on each company's official website. No individual product or company names are given, and no comparison or evaluation of merit is made. Published content is as of August 2026. How a law applies depends on the form of the transaction, the product and the process, and any individual determination rests with the competent authority.
