The move will delight the island-state’s government, which has made no secret of its ambitions to become a food hub where “packaged goods companies can grow their global brands and develop products to meet the needs of Asian consumers,” said Thien Kwee Eng, a senior official in Singapore’s development board.
Fuji follows the likes of PepsiCo, Nestlé, FrieslandCampina, Mead Johnson Nutrition and Mondelēz, which have each established regional hubs in Singapore to develop products specifically for Asian market.
“Fuji Oil has selected Singapore to establish this facility to leverage on its ideal position as the hub of Asia to springboard its business to southeast Asia, the greater Asian region including India and the Middle East and the African markets,” said Hiroshi Shimizu, president and chief executive of Fuji Oil Group.
“It will be equipped with facilities to enable our researchers to breed new ideas, spawn new technologies and generate new pipelines of food products.”
The R&D base will work alongside Fuji’s existing application centre and begin with 20 staff, including 14 researchers.
Fuji’s strategy is to integrate product development, application development and marketing under one roof to be able to quickly identify new trends and shorten the time to market for new products.
“This will help bolster Singapore’s position as the leading location in Asia to grow global brands and accelerate Asia-centric product development activities,” Added Thien.