Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
The Jolly Green Giant as a Corporate Migrant
The Green Giant company began life as the Minnesota Valley Canning Company in Le Sueur,
Minnesota, in 1903. The company grew steadily through the 1940s and in 1950 changed its
name to Green Giant. Although the canned and frozen vegetable business stagnated in the
1950s, the 1960s saw a return to profitability for the company. During the 1960s and 1970s,
Green Giant expanded its operations beyond simply processing vegetables. It opened a chain
of restaurants and sandwich shops along with a number of Green Giant Home and Garden
Centers. While these ventures were of dubious financial success, the company remained prof-
itable throughout the 1970s. 5
In 1979, Pillsbury acquired the Green Giant company in what appeared to be a friendly
takeover. Although at the time of the takeover Green Giant had expanded its operations bey-
ond canning and packaging vegetables to include restaurants, meat products, and fruits, after
the takeover Pillsbury divested itself of everything except the vegetable business. In turn,
Pillsbury streamlined Green Giant's vegetable business and turned it into a very profitable
venture.
In 1989, Pillsbury, which was an emerging food conglomerate in and of itself, was ac-
quired by Grand Metropolitan, a UK-based multinational food giant. Grand Metropolitan's
plans for Green Giant were to make it “the number one vegetable company in the world by
the year 2000.” 6
To accomplish this daunting feat, Grand Met divested Green Giant of all of its production
and processing facilities. Green Giant closed many of its processing plants. Those that were
not closed were sold either to Seneca Foods, J. R. Simplot (a Boise, Idaho, packer), or to Un-
ited Refrigerated Cold Storage in Atlanta. These divestitures were made to “increase compet-
itiveness and customer service.” According to Ian Martin, the CEO of Grand Metropolitan,
the goal was to make Green Giant “a true international brand with its cartoon figure [the Jolly
Green Giant] in line with all of the green values of ecology.” 7
In the 1990s, then, Green Giant became the first “virtual” food corporation. Today it owns
no production or processing facilities. Green Giant procures the vegetables it needs by enter-
ing into contracts with farmers around the world. It then out-sources the canning and pack-
aging of these commodities to companies like Seneca Foods, which operates twenty-two
packing plants in seven states. As Seneca Foods proudly proclaims, “Give us your recipe and
your specifications and we'll provide a finished product that you'll be proud to put your label
on.” 8
In late 1997 Grand Metropolitan merged with Guinness Ltd. of Ireland to form an even
larger multinational food giant, Diageo. In 1997, Diageo sold almost $19 billion in food and
beverage products. It had become the eighth-largest food and beverage company in the world.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search