OSAKA -- Snow Brand Milk Products Co. on Wednesday closed down its plant in Osaka following last summer's food-poisoning outbreak caused by low-fat milk and yogurt manufactured there, company officials said.
The plant in Osaka's Miyakojima Ward shut down after 45 years of operation without ceremony. The plant had been one of the dairy's major supply hubs since 1965, producing goods mostly for the Kansai region in western Japan.
Snow Brand officials insist the move is in line with the company's reorganization of milk production and unrelated to the food-poisoning scandal.
Production at the factory had been suspended since the nation's biggest dairy product maker learned it had been shipping tainted products in July.
In September, the company decided to shut down the plant for financial reasons.
The company notified the Osaka city government of its decision in December, and plans to sell the lot by 2003.
Snow Brand plans to clear the lot and sell it within two years. Officials also said they are preparing to move some of the Osaka plant's production facilities, which are still usable, to Snow Brand's other factories.
Health authorities concluded Dec. 20 that bacterial toxin in powdered skim milk produced at Snow Brand's Taiki factory in Hokkaido was the cause of the widespread food-poisoning outbreak that made about 13,400 people ill in western Japan.
The Osaka factory was found to have produced low-fat milk and yogurt drinks using skim milk from the Taiki factory.