Tokyo-headquartered Kaneka Corporation has signaled its entrance into the dairy products business as its affiliate food sales company, Kaneka Shokuhin Co., Ltd begins to sell “Milk for Bread” at bakeries around the city.

And from next month the company starts with butter for mainly commercial use such as bakeries and confectionery customers.

As the move into dairy products gathers pace, Kaneka Shokuhin Co also plans to gradually introduce dairy products like yogurt and functional foods to the market, while aiming to roll out sales beyond the Tokyo metropolitan and Kansai area.

The company is also constructing a dairy products manufacturing factory in Hokkaido.

This comes after Kaneka formed a technical tie-up with Pur Natur Invest BVBA, headquartered in Belgium, aiming to develop and manufacture high-quality dairy products.

Pur Natur has eight group companies and is developing organic milk products for European countries. Its dairy portfolio includes flavorful milk, butter, yogurt, fresh cheese.

“The domestic dairy farming industry is in a tough situation due to a lack of successors and a labor shortage. Acceleration of giving up farming has become a serious issue. By considering attractive dairy-farming together with dairy farmers and promoting sustainable dairy-farming as our philosophy of business development, we deal with increasing dairy-farming productivity, improving the dairy-farming working environment, and supporting environmentally-friendly dairy-farming management,” says Kaneka Corporation.

“We will work on expanding the domestic organic dairy products market in cooperation with the Belgian dairy farmer group contracted by Pur Natur, as well as domestic-related research institutes etc.”