Madrid-headquartered chocolate and cocoa derivatives company Natra is to invest €12 million to create a production facility in Ontario, Canada as it responds to customer demand in North America.
The company said that the new project is part of Natra’s strategic plan, one of the prior objectives being to increase the company’s position in markets outside Europe, and especially in North America and Asia, following the commercial progress already made in these regions in the last two years.
The new rented production facility will be part of Natra’s consumer goods division, alongside the four existing multi-product factories in Spain, France and Belgium where the company produces chocolate bars, chocolate spreads, countlines and Belgian chocolates and specialties.
The division’s current annual production is 77,000 tonnes of chocolate products, which the company aims to complement with an additional 12,000 tonnes from the new Canadian plant over the next three years.
Natra estimates the new plant will be fully operational in the first half of 2014.
Natra's manufacturing presence in Canada will be accompanied by the opening of a new sales office in Toronto next June, which the company said will allow it to concentrate the consumer goods division’s production and commercial teams in the area. The company will maintain its sales office in San Diego, which will revert to its original activity - the marketing of the industrial goods division’s cocoa derivatives.
"In 2012, the North American market accounted for 12% of Natra’s consumer goods division’s turnover,” said Natra’s CEO Mikel Beitia. “Sales in that region rose from €13 million in 2011 to €29 million at the end of 2012, a growth of 123%. With the increased presence of Natra in North America, we estimate that the consumer goods division’s sales in this market will double again in the next three years."
