Believe it or not, Kikkoman Foods, a Japan-based company, loves Walworth, Wisconsin for soy sauce production. Can you guess the main reason why? It is because of geography! After exporting soy sauce to the United States from Japan for over 100 years, Kikkoman decided to begin production in North America, specifically in Wisconsin in 1972, which is when the plant opened up in Walworth. Wisconsin is centrally located for Kikkoman to efficiently distribute products, which can help give them a competitive advantage when selling to nearby stores. In addition, production has increased twenty-fold since opening the Wisconsin-based plant over 40 years ago. Here is a key line from the success story on the invest.inwisconsin.com website: "Considering the suppliers, service providers and contractors that support the company's operations, Kikkoman's economic impact on the state's economy is significant." It is also worth noting that over 175 people work for Kikkoman Foods in Wisconsin, and more soy sauce is produced at the Wisconsin plant than any other facility worldwide!
More information about Kikkoman Foods can be found here.
The original success story can be found here (scroll to Kikkoman Foods).
After reading the article it confirmed my first guess that the supply of the ingredients namely soy and wheat are more plentiful in this region. Thank you for the informative post.
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I never would have guessed that Wisconsin was the highest producer of soy sauce. But it does make sense as the central states are high producers of wheat, and the cost for Japan to export is much greater than the cost to grow/manufacture the product here.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting this! I had no idea that Wisconsin produced, let alone was the largest producer, of soy sauce. Very interesting!
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