Japan looks to foreign makers for paper cups Japan is a massive consumer of paper cups and dishes.
Hong Kong, Mainland China and South Korea are among Japan's top five suppliers of paper tableware, according to Japanese Market News. Over the past five years, Japan's consumption of paper tableware rose 3.6 times. Value-wise, the increase was 3.3 times. In 1993, Hong Kong was the largest supplier of paper tableware to Japan. However, the US earned pole position in 1997 after the proliferation of US and South Korean fast-food stops, which ordered a huge volume of paper tableware from US manufacturers.