No. of food items to see price hikes in Japan to more than triple in Sept.

TOKYO - The prices of 4,923 food and beverage items in Japan are set to rise in September, up more than threefold from a year earlier and the most for a month in more than three years, a research firm's survey showed Monday.

The surge reflects a jump in prices of crude oil and naphtha caused by the Middle East crisis, which had a knock-on effect of driving up the cost of packaging materials, Teikoku Databank said. Naphtha, a raw material derived from crude oil, is used to produce plastics.