Snow Brand Milk Products Co. said Friday it will permanently close the Osaka plant that produced tainted milk products that caused widespread food poisoning last summer.
Snow Brand President Kohei Nishi told a press conference in Tokyo that the company will notify Osaka municipal health authorities later in the day that the plant in Miyakojima Ward will close Jan. 31.
Production at the factory has been suspended since the poisoning outbreak in June and July. The city government ordered production to be halted on July 2, following a series of consumer complaints.
Nishi also announced the results of an in-house probe into the cause of the poisoning, which sickened more than 13,000 people, saying it was powdered skim milk originating from the firm's Taiki plant in Hokkaido.
He did not specify at which stage of production enterotoxin A, which is produced by staphylococcus aureus bacteria, entered the products, but said it could have developed during cream separation or condensation procedures related to powdered milk at the Osaka plant.
The company's explanation was in line with a final report released Wednesday by a joint Osaka municipal and Health and Welfare Ministry investigative team.
Nishi and three other Snow Brand executives also said Tetsuro Ishikawa, the former president, received the first report about the food poisoning two days after the first consumer complaint was lodged and a day after Osaka health officials inspected the Miyakojima plant.