The company unveiled the new 54,000 square foot extension to the facility last week, and will become a major manufacturing hub to supply the both the North American and global markets.
According to Edward Houlihan, an increasing proportion of the products that are manufactured at the facility are being exported, particularly to new markets, so the extension to the facility has been made to meet this additional demand.
The facility now covers a total area of 265,000 square feet, making it one of the company’s largest production units in the world, outside the domestic market of Japan.
Consolidation of the US manufacturing operations
The plant was opened back in 1998 and employs around 150 people. The new extension is expected to raise production volumes by approximately one third and will add around 10 staff to the employee count.
As well as manufacturing products for the Shiseido USA brands and Shiseido’s international brands, the facility also manufacturers both NAR and Bare Escentuals cosmetics, which are both owned by the company.
The expansion of the New Jersey facility is part of a larger scale restructuring of the company’s US operations, which will see the company’s other facility in Bergen County New Jersey phased out, while its Colombus, Ohio facility will become a bigger operations center.
Two phase expansion of the facility
This is the first of a two phase expansion program that will eventually expand the facility by 73,000 square feet, increasing the total surface area by approximately 35 percent.
The second phase will see the construction of an 18,400 square foot manufacturing and warehouse addition that will be located behind the new office space.
The Shiseido group has been steadily increasing its footprint in countries and regions outside of the domestic Japan market in recent years, after a prolonged stagnation due to economic hardships has led to heated competition and very limited opportunity for sales growth.
As well as developing its business footprint in major markets in the Americas and Europe, it has also taken the decision to expand into lesser known developing markets in recent years, including smaller countries in Eastern Europe and Central America.