Japanese food major Meiji Co. is to spend $28m building capacity for its Hello Panda snack brand in the US.

It will be invested in its subsidiary Meiji America’s plant in Santa Ana, California.

Details of what the expansion entails were not forthcoming.

Meiji, which also owns Animal Crackers manufacturer Stauffer’s in the US, said the Hello Panda expansion plan is part of its Meiji Group 2026 Vision plan, which is targeting international growth.

The company wants overseas sales to amount to 10% or more of total sales by fiscal 2026. By Meiji's 2026 fiscal year, it wants to generate Y170bn ($1.12bn) in sales outside Japan, which would compare to Y77.3bn in its 2023 financial year. Meiji is aiming for Y60bn of those Y170bn in sales to come from China.

In Meiji's 2023 fiscal year, its group sales were Y7.3trn.

Hello Panda is a chocolate cream-filled biscuit that was created in Japan. It is now sold in 30 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America.

The product was first sold in the US in the 1990s and has been produced there since 2015.

Meiji said the expansion plan is to meet growing demand for Hello Panda. It said that, since 2017, sales in the US have tripled.

“We aim to achieve sales of approximately 1.5 times that of fiscal 2023 by fiscal 2026,” it said.

To aid its future growth in the market, Meiji said it plans to launch a new product under the brand, Hello Panda Pretzel.

The new product will initially be manufactured in Japan and exported to the US.

In February, Meiji reinvested in US cell-based cocoa start-up California Cultured, after initially investing in 2021.