Nongshim Opens Its First Export-Only Ramen Plant, Lifting Export Capacity to 1.2 Billion Packs

Nongshim, the South Korean food company behind Shin Ramyun instant noodles, has started running its first factory built only for exports. The plant in Noksan, an industrial area of Busan, began operating on October 29 and can make up to 500 million packs of ramen a year. With it, the company's Korean export capacity rises from 700 million to 1.2 billion packs a year, according to Nongshim. This post explains what the plant does, why a dedicated export site matters, and which numbers will show whether the bet pays off.

What Nongshim built in Busan

The new plant sits on the grounds of Nongshim's existing Noksan factory. It is a six-story building with about 48,178 square meters of floor space. Three production lines are running now, two for bagged noodles and one for cup noodles, and the building was designed to hold up to eight lines if demand grows. The investment was reported at more than KRW 200 billion, or roughly $147 million at the November 6 Seoul closing rate of KRW 1,356.6 per dollar.

Speed is part of the pitch. Nongshim says its bag-noodle line can turn out more than 600 packs a minute, and its cup line about 500 a minute. The site is about four kilometers from Busan New Port, a major container port, which shortens the trip from factory to ship.

Why a plant only for exports

Export ramen is not one product. Each country has its own rules on additives, preferred noodle thickness and recipe, and packaging language. That means a line making Shin Ramyun for Japan has to be reset before it can make the same brand for Europe. Every minute spent on that changeover is a minute the line does not produce.

Nongshim says automation and a central production system at the new plant cut changeover time from about two hours to 30 minutes, roughly a quarter of the time at its older Korean plants. The company says that raised production efficiency by 17.6%. Reports also said Nongshim's existing Korean plants were running at close to 90% of capacity, which left little room to absorb growing overseas orders.

The plant is also meant to support a wider product range. Nongshim exports ramen and other products to about 100 countries, according to Korean press reports, and it is pushing noodles without broth, such as stir-fried versions of Shin Ramyun, alongside the classic soup style. More product types mean more changeovers, which is why the company built the new site around fast switching rather than only raw volume. Output from Noksan is planned for markets where Nongshim already has local units, such as Europe, Japan and Australia, as well as India, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

Production capacity: the maximum amount a factory can make in a given period. Actual output depends on orders and operating days, so it is usually lower than capacity.

The numbers behind the move

Going from 700 million to 1.2 billion packs is an increase of about 71% in export capacity. Adding 3.3 billion packs of domestic capacity and 1.7 billion packs from local plants in the United States and China, Nongshim's total capacity reaches up to 6.2 billion packs a year across ten production sites.

Demand has been rising too. In the first half of this year, overseas sales of the Shin Ramyun brand were KRW 651.3 billion, about $480 million at the same exchange rate, up 36% from a year earlier. Working backward from that growth rate, the first half of last year would have been about KRW 478.9 billion. Overseas markets now account for 71% of Shin Ramyun brand sales. A newer product, Shin Ramyun Toomba, launched in November 2024, had sold about 147 million packs by September this year.

The 2030 target and what to watch

Nongshim has set a 2030 goal of KRW 7.3 trillion in annual revenue, about $5.4 billion, with more than 60% of sales coming from overseas. In the first half of this year, overseas sales were 40.2% of the company total. Closing that gap requires overseas revenue to grow much faster than domestic sales for several years.

The company plans to add new buyers and quick-delivery channels in India and the Middle East, expand convenience-store and online sales in Southeast Asia, and launch a new stir-fried noodle product as early as the first quarter of next year.

Our read: the plant is the supply side of the plan. The more important number is demand. Investors and industry watchers can track whether the new 500 million packs of capacity actually fill with export orders, and whether the overseas share in quarterly results keeps moving toward 60%.

Bottom line

Nongshim's Noksan plant is built to switch quickly between many export versions of the same noodles. Export capacity of 1.2 billion packs is now in place; the next test is whether overseas demand keeps pace.

Sources: Nongshim