FDBusiness.com

Mondelez International, the world’s leading maker of chocolate, biscuits, gum and candy, has announced plans to invest $90 million in building a biscuit plant in the Kingdom of Bahrain to meet rising demand in the Middle East and Africa for company brands such as Oreo, Ritz and TUC biscuits.

With full commercial production scheduled to start in early 2016, the planned facility will be Mondelez International’s most advanced manufacturing site in the Middle East and Africa, where demand for its biscuits has been growing at double-digit rates.

In the initial two- to three-year phase, the new plant will operate four biscuit-manufacturing lines with a total capacity of nearly 90,000 tons per year. Like other, state-of-the-art Mondelez International plants, the facility is scalable.

“This investment in Bahrain is part of our ongoing supply-chain reinvention plan,” saya Daniel Myers, Mondelez International Executive Vice President, Integrated Supply Chain. “We’re implementing several such initiatives around the world to capitalize on growing demand, while also reducing costs and improving productivity. We’re pleased with our progress in regions, such as Mexico and India, where we’ve already begun to invest.”

Mondelez International’s supply-chain reinvention plan is expected to deliver $3 billion in gross-productivity savings, $1.5 billion in net savings and $1 billion in incremental cash over the next three years. These savings will be a primary driver of significant improvements in the company’s base operating-income margin in the near term.

This is Mondelez International’s second, major investment in Bahrain. The US-based company has already invested more than $75 million in developing a Kraft Cheese and Tang powdered-beverage plant in Bahrain which has been operational since 2008. With a production capacity of 110,000 tons per year, the existing facility employs more than 240 people.