Happy New Year!

At Yakult Australia, the year 2017 is off to a flying start.

Since our recent outer packaging update late last year, we have worked to improve the visibility of our use-by-date on individual Yakult bottles.

The use-by-date, previously embossed on the foil cap, will now be printed on the waist of the bottle.

While the outer packaging will still display the use-by-date on the back of the pack, we anticipate the new date marking directly on the bottle will be beneficial to our consumers. Each bottle will be marked by a production batch code followed by the use-by-date in order of date, month and year.

We hope our consumers will enjoy the ease of using the new and improved date marking system.

Yakult is pleased to announce it has extended its long standing partnership with the Essendon Football Club for a further two years. Yakult is the longest serving community partner with Essendon continuing our support since 2005.

For the next 2 seasons you will continue to see the Yakult logo on the footballs for Essendon Home Matches.

Yakut is also delighted to support ‘The Next Generation Academy Program’ which is offered to more than 600+ boys and girls aged 11 to 15 who dream of playing for the Football Club. This program is run for 10 weeks across 3 regions allocated to EFC with a particular focus on those of a multicultural and indigenous background.

Yakult will also be supporting the Bombers in 2017 as they continue their Comeback Story.

Welcome summer to your morning routine!

Let’s start off with why we need a good breakfast. Just like a car won’t go without any fuel in it, our body’s need energy from food in order for us to face our day. We need to make sure we are feeding our body good sources of energy. What you eat for breakfast has been shown to affect the way you eat throughout the day. Regularly skipping breakfast has been linked to an increased risk of becoming overweight or obese.

So what is in a good breakfast? Start by including sources of carbohydrates, proteins and fat, and pack it with vitamins and minerals.

Good carbohydrate sources include oats, wholegrain breads and breakfast cereals. We need carbohydrates in our diet particularly in the morning because as we digest these kinds of food it gives our brain and body it’s most preferred source of energy, glucose. The fibre from the whole grains can also assist the digestion process.

Good protein and fat sources to include at breakfast are eggs, nut butters, milks and cheese. Eating breakfast with one or more of these foods will help to keep you feeling full, so you don’t crave snacks throughout your morning. This is because these types of food take longer to digest in your stomach.

Enjoy summer breakfast’s by adding some fresh fruit and vegetables. They add colour, variety, vitamins and minerals to your morning.

Here are some quick breakfast tips for your morning to help get your ‘engine’ started-

If you have been keeping up to date with our News page each month you may recall that in June we posted news about our latest expansion project at our production site in Dandenong, Victoria.

This expansion project involved the planning and construction of a new state of the art cool room, complete with an automated moving racking system that allowed us to minimise space between shelving racks, reducing the energy that would have been required to cool a larger storage facility. Another energy efficient system that was integrated into our new cool room was the installation of LED lighting that has been synchronised to turn on and off with the moving racks, therefor only the rows of lights over open aisles are in use.

The planned completion date for this project was originally Thursday 6th October, 2016.

We are proud to announce that we have reached the completion of this project ahead of schedule and our first pallet was dispatched from our new cool room on Wednesday 31st August 2016.

We have many more upgrades in store for our factory over the coming year so stay tuned to our News page for ongoing updates.

There is lots of exciting things happening as we continue to expand and upgrade our manufacturing facility to make room for all the delicious Yakult we make fresh daily.

We are currently also in the process of updating the packaging for all our Yakult products with a revamp of our current labels. In line with consumer feedback and our drive for continued improvement, the new packaging features ‘open here’ tabs on the outer plastic wrap, with in-built perforated lines for easy opening.

The ‘open here’ tabs will feature on both the Yakult original 5-pack and Yakult LIGHT. While the Yakult original 10-pack will have the in-built perforated lines on the back of the packs, the printed ‘open here’ tabs will not feature on the new 10-pack design.

To open press the perforated lines on the ‘open here’ tabs to allow the outer wrap to split open.

The new packaging will also feature an update to our current Yakult logo, from the green and red brackets we have used for over 20 years to the all new red brackets.

With the same great taste and benefits of 6.5 billion live beneficial bacteria in each and every bottle; look out for our new Yakult packs coming your way!

Winter has well and truly set in and with it comes the dreaded cold and flu season. Good nutrition is the foundation of a strong immune system. No one food can boost immunity; we need to include a wide variety of foods that contain key nutrients for immune health.

Vitamin C
Vitamin C is a water-soluble vitamin meaning it is not stored in appreciable amounts in the body, making daily consumption necessary. Research indicates that vitamin C is more efficient in reducing the duration and potentially the severity of a cold than it is for cold prevention; nevertheless many immune cells require vitamin C to carry out their tasks.

What to eat: Vitamin C is found in a variety of fruits and vegetables, such as berries, citrus and kiwi fruit, broccoli, capsicum and sprouts.

Zinc
Zinc is an essential mineral for immune function as it helps the body fight off invading bacteria and viruses. Like vitamin C, zinc is not stored in the body, making regular intake necessary to maintain the integrity of the immune system.

What to eat: Oysters contain the highest amount of zinc per serve of any food, but red meat and poultry, along with fish and other seafood are also good sources. Some vegetarian sources of zinc include beans, pumpkin seeds and nuts.

Prebiotics
70% of the immune system is found in the gut so it is not surprising that there is a strong relationship between digestive and immune health. Prebiotics are a type of fibre that reach the large intestine undigested and provide nourishment to the beneficial bacteria that reside there, this is one way of increasing the number of good bacteria in the gut.

What to eat: A variety of foods contain prebiotics, such as garlic, onion, leek, asparagus, chickpeas, lentils, baked beans, nectarines, pomegranate, rye bread, oats and cashews. See my earlier post, ‘Simple tips for adding prebiotics to your family favourites’ for a list of foods high in prebiotic fibre.

Probiotics
The complementary intake of probiotics can encourage the growth of our body’s own endogenous bacteria; in turn they have the ability to influence our immune system. A good body of evidence suggests that the intake of probiotics can reduce the incidence of respiratory infections in both children and adults.

What to eat: Benefits of probiotics are strain specific, what is important is to ensure you are taking a product with a well-researched strain, make sure there is evidence to support its use.

Meg Sadler-Keary
Yakult Dietitian

Due to the increasing demand for Yakult we have outgrown our current storage premises. A new 340m2 cool room is currently being built.

This will nearly triple our current storage capacity. There has been a hive of activity around the factory with expansion and construction of the new cold room which is due to be completed around late September. The cool room will be fitted with an innovative automated racking system which will be able to store approximately 336 pallets which equates to about 2.8 million bottles of Yakult. This new process is an Australian first for the company to install this type of racking in a storage facility. It will be more efficient in utilising storage space. The expansion will ensure we have sufficient cold storage for years to come, enabling us to provide our customers in Australia and New Zealand with refreshing Yakult made fresh daily in our factory straight from our facility to a supermarket near you.

There will be an official opening ceremony when the storage facility is completed. We are all very keen to see the new process of the automated racking system that will be installed in the cool room.

Watch this space for further updates!

The following photos display a snap shot of the process of constructing the new cold storage room.

During the month of May we are ‘all hands on deck’ as we embrace one of our busiest times of year in the Public Relations department.

Since commencing operation in 1994, Yakult Australia has been committed to improving the link between industry and education and with this in mind has established a factory tour program which can be tailored to complement the current school curriculum. The aim of this program is to provide an alternative environment for learning which can be adapted to suit a range of topics. During a factory tour students are able to learn about the history of Yakult while they view the manufacturing process which incorporates some of the latest food processing equipment, and the topic of these tours can be focused on subjects such as digestive health, food safety, microorganisms and business management.

On average, Yakult Australia hosts up to 7,000 guests per year on tours of our modern manufacturing facility, with approximately ¼ of the year’s tours taking place in May to coincide with the Victorian school curriculum topic of Operations Management which is a major focus for all VCE students studying Business Management, Unit 3.

Yakult Australia are happy to arrange tours for consumers, primary schools, secondary colleges, tertiary education groups, school holiday programs and community groups to view our manufacturing facility. If you would like to arrange a factory visit please contact us on 1800 640 023 as bookings are essential.