Japan's Unicharm Corp.  announced it is willing to spend 65.7 billion yen (US$698 million) to buy the shares it does not already own in its petfood-making affiliate,  Unicharm Petcare Corp. , according to  Reuters .

Unicharm currently owns about 37% of the petfood firm, which is one of the top global petfood manufacturers and has made the   Petfood Industry Top 10 list  for several years.