Cooperating with Local Financial Institutions to Provide Sato Foods Industries with Capital for the Construction of the Seiro Factory

Sato Foods Co., Ltd. (headquarters: Niigata, Niigata Prefecture), is a food manufacturer that produces and sells Sato no gohan (packaged ready-to-eat rice) and Sato no kirimochi (rice cakes). The company is pouring energies into the development of technologies and products to address consumer needs which are changing with the times, including the development of aseptic packaging technologies that make long-term, room temperature storage possible. Sato Foods, as a leading company in the Niigata food industry, provides a reliable supply of safe food products.

This project, which was co-financed by local financial institutions, provided capital for the construction of the Sato no gohan factory in Seiro City. The Seiro factory's products will address the growing demand for packaged rice owing to changing lifestyles that have been triggered by the increase in nuclear family and one-person households in recent years.

This new factory aims to reduce labor and improve production efficiency, including automation of production lines, while continuing to cook single-meal portions of rice in individual rice-cooking packages. It increases production capacity for packaged rice from 830,000 to 1.03 million packages. In addition, the new factory's passageways and areas dedicated to general tour visitors are expected to play a role in industrial tourism, contributing to the revitalization of tourism in Niigata.