Mars Wrigley invests $175m in facility expansion to ramp up candy bar production

The new investment into the Kansas facility will go towards expanding the confectionery company's production of Snickers, Milky Way, and 3 Musketeers products and create 100 new jobs in the area. The news follows Mars Wrigley's announcement that it would be closing its Chicago-area production plant this year, which had been in operation since 1929. The expansion to its Topeka plant (which has been in operation since 2014 and at the time was the company's first new plant to be built in North America in 35 years) will include new equipment that will allow for increased efficiencies in the packaging process, the company said. Over the past eight years, Mars Wrigley said it has invested more than $750m in the local Topeka community including a previous $100m investment in 2015, shortly after opening the plant. As a privately-held company, Mars Wrigley does not publicly share its earnings, but data from the National Confectioners Association (NACS) shows that sales of chocolate were up 9.2% hitting $21.2bn in 2021, according to IRI data.