Snack food maker Calbee Inc it will restart selling three brands of potato chips it halted in April from next week, as it is now able to procure enough potatoes.
Calbee had stopped sales of some of its potato chip brands due to a shortage of potatoes in Japan caused by a poor harvest in Hokkaido after the area was hit by a series of typhoons last August.
But as potato harvesting started in other areas last month, the company plans to use those potatoes to resume sales of Pizza Potato and two other brands from Monday.
The shortage sparked a buying spree of chips in Japan, as other major snack food companies were also forced to partially suspend their potato chip production.
While snack producers in the country prefer domestic crops due in part to the complexity of exterminating harmful insects from imported potatoes, some 80 percent of potatoes in the country are produced in Hokkaido, Japan’s northern main island.
Four typhoons lashed northern Japan last August, an unprecedented number over such a short period of time. The rain and flooding severely affected agriculture, with potato production in Hokkaido declining 10 percent year on year to 1.72 million tons in 2016.
Calbee said it received over 1,000 requests to restart sales over a period of two months.
Source: Japan Today Imagem: ANN
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