According to reports,Japan's Yakult Honsha recently announced a decision to close its Shanghai factory, its lactic acid bacteria beverage production base in Shanghai, China, and plans to completely stop production activities at the factory on the same day.
Yakult China stated,The Shanghai factory has been integrated into the Shanghai headquarters. The closure of the Shanghai factory is part of the promotion of operational reforms. The purpose is to improve production efficiency through reorganization and integrate resource allocation to further increase sales and performance.
Previously, Japan's Yakult headquarters has made it clear that in order to optimize resource allocation and reduce fixed costs, it has decided to move the production tasks of the Shanghai factory to other production bases in China, including the Tianjin factory and the Wuxi factory.
Looking back at history, Yakult entered the Chinese market for the first time in 2002, initially setting sail in Guangzhou under the name Yakult. The following year, it took root in Shanghai with the Yakult brand. After nearly two decades of hard work, Yakult (China) Group has built a huge network of 53 branches and 6 production bases in China.
It is worth noting that these six production bases are currently located in Guangzhou (2 locations), Tianjin, Wuxi (2 locations) and Foshan, and the Shanghai factory is no longer included.In 2004, Yakult Shanghai Company was officially established, witnessing the brand's vigorous development in the Chinese market.
As of September 2023, Yakult's daily sales volume in the Chinese market has dropped to 2.53 million bottles, a sharp drop of 23% year-on-year. Compared with the peak daily sales volume of 7.609 million bottles in the past, the decline was close to 70%. This severe market performance may be one of the important factors that prompted Yakult to make the decision to close the Shanghai factory.