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"Alive and well, and important to Heinz," is the how Grant Jones described Ore-Ida Foods, Inc., recently.
The world's largest producer of retail frozen-potato products, headquartered in Boise, accounted for over 10 percent of parent H.J. Heinz's $9.4 billion in sales last year, and promises to do equally well this year, according to company spokesman Jones.
That's even though Ore-Ida, by one measure, has become a much smaller company. During 1997, employment contracted from more than 5,600 company-wide to about 2,100, a drop of 62 percent.
Change came with Heinz's sale of Ore-Ida's frozen food-service operations to a Canadian competitor, McCain Foods, Ltd., for "about $500 million" in cash. Included were five plants--one in Burley, dating from 1961; three in Wisconsin; and one each in Nebraska and Arkansas.
The deal was part of a corporate-wide Heinz reorganization plan, dubbed "Project Millennia," intended to make ketchup colossus Heinz "one of the three pre-eminent branded food companies in the world." (The others: Unilver and Nestle.)
According to an Ore-Ida statement, "the Heinz reorganization plan includes closing or selling plants throughout the world" and "reducing the global work force by 6 percent, or about 2,500."
Proceeds from the McCain transaction would "free substantial amounts of capital or company expansion," Heinz CEO Anthony J.F. O'Reilly said at the time, and would "allow" Ore-Ida to "focus on the profitable retail frozen potato business."
The food-service operations--producing frozen potatoes and other products for institutional and commercial use--were "very profitable," said Jones, but "it made more sense for us concentrate on retail we're No. 1 in frozen potatoes, No. 1 in frozen pasta ... it just made more sense for us to concentrate on the very profitable retail business."
How profitable, Ore-Ida won't tell. As a Heinz "affiliate"--wholly owned by Pittsburgh-based Heinz since 1965---it is not separately traded and does not report results publicly.
The closest thing to a financial Ore-Ida will supply is that, as Jones put it, "we're about a $1 billion company."
That, he stated, is likely to be true again this fiscal year, even. without food-service sales. "We'd...