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

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.Higher personnel and logistics costs and rises in import product prices from the weakening yen also prompted com…READ FULL ARTICLE