On 24th November 2017, the cosmetics and chemical producer announced it had completed construction on its new Taiwan-based beauty care manufacturing plant.
Kao Corporation's Taiwan subsidiary, Kao (Taiwan) has unveiled its new production building for manufacturing beauty care products in its existing Hsinchu Plant, located in Hsinchu County, Taiwan.
Bringing production to Taiwan
In recent years, Kao has bolstered its production capacity in Japan and overseas, building new plants and adding more production lines. Following these activities, it made the decision to inject an initial investment of approximately 3.3 bn Japanese yen (€24.9 mn) to the project.
Led by plant manager, Liu Chien Hsien, the site sits on an area of approximately 58,000 square metres. The new beauty production facility itself is a four-story building, on an area of 2,800 squares metres, and has a total floor area of around 8,600 square metres.
Kao devised plans for the newly completed production building, which aims to reinforce the supply capacity of its growing Taiwanese beauty care business.
Raising standards
The Hsinchu Plant, which already belongs to Kao (Taiwan) has doubled the production capacity of beauty care products when combined with existing units. In March 2009, the plant became the first Taiwanese beauty care product manufacturing facility to obtain GMP certification.
The business is raising its efforts in accordance with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), and is establishing manufacturing process control standards to ensure products are made safely and maintain a level of quality throughout the process, from receipt of raw materials to production and shipping.
As it strives to improve its performance and ensure higher quality products, Kao (Taiwan) installed the new production building with more sophisticated equipment and clean rooms as it works towards establishing “top-level manufacturing environment standards” in the Taiwanese beauty care business.
Staggered approach
Kao has a beauty portfolio of over 20 leading brands including: Attack, Bioré, Goldwell, Jergens, John Frieda, Kanebo, Laurier, Merries and Molton Brown. Its new building will start by manufacturing skin care products from brands, Bioré and Men's Bioré, along with hair care items from Essential, Liese. In the near future, the cosmetics name plans to add further items to it production list as it grows.
The new production facility is a strategic step towards the company achieving its Kao Group Mid-term Plan 2020 (K20), which, devised in 2017, plans to "expand the consumer products business in Asia and increase its profit margin”.