Five SPC Affiliates Including Samlip and Shany Occupy 83% of the Bread Market: "Ppangkao" Turns Out to Be True

The Pyeongtaek factory of SPL, an SPC affiliate, in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi. Mun Jae-won

Five affiliates of the SPC group enjoyed a near monopoly over the domestic bread market with market shares of over 80%.

According to the food industry statistics released by the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation on October 25, the five SPC affiliates accounted for 83.4% or over 3.7 trillion won of sales among the total sales of 4.5 trillion won recorded by 82 bread manufacturers that sold products last year.

Paris Croissant, which operates Paris Baguette, accounted for 41.0% of the sales with over 1.8 trillion won, while SPC Samlip, which owns brands like Samlip Hopang, accounted for 30.3% with over 1.3 trillion won.

Recently, a fatal accident occurred in an SPL bread factory in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, killing a worker in her twenties. SPL accounted for 5.7% of the total sales with nearly 257.6 billion won. At Shany, a worker in her forties had her finger severed by a machine. Shany recorded sales of 222.2 billion won or 4.9% of the total sales. Honam Shany accounted for 1.4% of sales with 65.4 billion won.

These affiliates of the SPC group ranked in the top five in sales.

They were followed by Rosso (62.8 billion won), Seoul Food Industrial Co. (just under 55.3 billion won), Shilla Bakery (55.2 billion won), Food Core (nearly 43.1 billion won), and Euro Bake (37.8 billion won).

The 82 bread manufacturers recorded average sales of nearly 55.1 billion won. Sales by Paris Croissant was 33.6 times the average, while SPC Samlip achieved sales equal to 24.9 times the average and SPL, 4.7 times the average sales figure.

A look at last year’s operating profits showed that SPC Samlip topped the list with 65 billion won, followed by Paris Croissant (33.4 billion won), Rosso (10.5 billion won), SPL (7.2 billion won), and Euro Bake (5.2 billion won).

SPC Samlip’s operating profits were 28.3 times last year’s average (nearly 2.3 billion won), and Paris Croissant’s operating profits were 14.6 times the average.

Bread manufacturing requires massive investment in facilities in the initial stage, as well as a storage and distribution system that can cover room temperatures to cold chains (refrigerated and frozen), so it is not easy to enter the market. SPC, in its growth period, aggressively acquired the existing companies, Samlip and Shany, and quickly expanded its business.

Many of the bread items sold in convenience stores and supermarkets, including the Pokemon Bread, are products manufactured by the SPC group, and SPC has a big influence in the bakery market as well with Paris Baguette. This is why a new word has been coined on the internet, “ppangkao.” It likens SPC’s monopoly in the bread (“ppang” in Korean) market to Kakao, which practically halted the nation when its services were suspended.