Borden

We are dedicated to building consumer focused food brands serving people around the world, enriching their eating experience every day with great tasting, wholesome, grain-based meal solutions. We accomplish this because we are a uniquely capable organization energized by common purpose and shared values. Our growth and shared success will be driven by our singular focus on meeting consumer needs through innovation. Through the pursuit of this mission and realization of our Vision, we will benefit our consumers, customers, suppliers, and communities as well as our associates and owners. We will become the "World's Most Admired Food Company." The Borden, Inc. of the late 1990s is a diversified producer of pasta (including Catelli, Classico, Creamette, and other brands), snacks (Wise, Moore's, Quinlan), and bouillon and dry soup (Wyler's); consumer adhesives (Elmer's, Krazy Glue); and formaldehyde, resins, coatings, and other industrial chemicals. Following an overly aggressive consumer products acquisition drive from 1986 to 1991, the company ran up huge losses in 1992 and 1993 primarily because it had accumulated a scattered collection of unintegrated brands--many of them of the minor variety. Borden was consequently taken private in March 1995 when investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) paid $2 billion for the company. Under KKR's guidance, Borden subsequently underwent a major restructuring, shedding numerous brands--including Cracker Jack, Eagle Brand, Cremora, and ReaLemon--and entire businesses, including the dairy business upon which the company was founded, its global packaging unit, its consumer wallcoverings business, and the Borden Foods cheese business. As one of the oldest and most widely known companies in the United States--a company best known through most of its history as a dairy company--Borden has undergone a 1990s transformation that has been particularly dramatic. Gail Borden, Jr., the company's founder, was born in 1801 in Norwich, New York. When his family migrated west, they stopped in Kentucky and Indiana Territory. Borden then moved to Mississippi before settling in Galveston, Texas. Along the way he worked as a surveyor, school teacher, farmer, and government official. He edited the first permanent newspaper in Texas, the Telegraph & Texas Register, and is said to have written the famous headline "Remember the Alamo." Borden made a hobby of inventing things. Among his creations was the prairie schooner, an awkward, sail-powered wagon. Another Borden device, the lazy Susan, can now be found in households everywhere. He also concocted the unsavory, yet serviceable, "meat biscuit," a lightweight, nonperishable food suited to travelers. Although the meat biscuit was a commercial failure, it was hailed as a scientific breakthrough and in 1851 Borden was invited to London to receive the Great Council Medal from Queen Victoria. The second enterprise also struggled financially until Borden met Jeremiah Milbank, a wholesale grocer, banker, and railroad financier. With Milbank's funding they formed a partnership in 1858 known as the New York Condensed Milk Company. Another stroke of fortune came when Borden decided to advertise in an issue of Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, which coincidentally contained an article condemning the unsanitary conditions at city dairies and the practice by many unscrupulous dairymen of adding chalk and eggs to enhance their "swill milk," as it was called. Soon after the magazine appeared, the New York Condensed Milk Company was delivering condensed milk throughout lower Manhattan and in Jersey City, New Jersey. In 1861 the U.S. government ordered 500 pounds of condensed milk for troops fighting in the Civil War. As the conflict grew, government orders increased, until Borden had to license other manufacturers to keep up with demand. After the war, the New York Condensed Milk Company had a ready-made customer base in both Union and Confederate veterans. To distingui