Ice-cream company wants bigger slice

Press, 15 February 1989, Page 49

Ice-cream company wants bigger slice

By

JOHN HUTCHISON,

in Bakersfield, California

Called the largest icecream factory in the world, a new facility of the Carnation Company is moving into full operation here to increase its share of the SUSS6OO million ($10,000M) American icecream market.

Carnation, a company founded in the western United States in 1899 as a pioneer maker of evaporated milk, was bought in 1985 by Nestle S.A. and began building the new plant in 1986. It cost SUSBO million, covers more than two hectares under one roof and will turn out nearly 140 million litres of icecream and related products this year. Even while the plant was under construction, the company decided to expand its capacity to

make Carnation the thirdlargest ice-cream producer in the nation.

Carnation, growing from its roots in the dairy industry in the state of Washington, has become a main producer of a wide range of tinned and frozen foods and dry and tinned pet foods as well as milk products. Along the way it acquired, and, under Nestle ownership, has divested itself of, divisions dealing in livestock feed, cattle genetics, food-tin manufacture, health shops, and even tools and school supplies. It has 9000 employees and 69 major facilities in the United States, with sales last year of SUS26OO million, now concentrated on food production and food service.

Demand for packaged ice-cream is rising at 5 per cent a year, and the

market for ice-cream specialities, called “frozen novelties” in trade language here, is also growing rapidly in popularity, advancing in the last five years by 50 per cent to annual sales of SUSI4OO million in 1988 with expectations of continuing increases. The stated intent of the Carnation Company is to establish competitive advantage through the efficiency of the new factory, and seize a larger share of these markets.

The plant uses a high developed system of computerised controls and monitoring for the automated manufacturing, storage and retrieval from cold stores maintained at minus 30deg.

When it reached full operation early this year there would be 200 employees, a company representative said.