Yamazaki Baking Invests USD183m for New Bread Plant in Japan

Japan’s top bread company will spend more than YEN20bn (USD183m) to build a bakery for loaves and sweet buns on the site of a Kobe plant that currently makes frozen dough.

The new facility will be the company’s fifth bakery in the Kansai region, raising production capacity there by around 10%. Construction will begin by the end of the year, according to http://asia.nikkei.com/.

The last Yamazaki bakery built from the ground up in Japan was completed in Anjo (a city near Nagoya) in 1990. The company has grown capacity since then by buying and repairing existing plants. But as bread demand continues to grow, Tamazaki Baking now invests in a new facility.

Bread is replacing rice as the staple in the diets of many in Japan. Households with two or more people spent more on the former than on the latter for the first time in 2011, according to a Ministry of Internal Affairs survey.

Yamazaki Baking produces a wide range of bread, Western-style confectionery and Japanese-style confectionery, biscuits, chocolate, candy and cookie products.