Borden's Green Pastures
After 106 years of peddling milk and ice cream, the Borden Co. next month will move into pickles too. When Borden's acquires a Michigan pickle firm called Aunt Jane's Foods, no mouths will pucker in the modest Madison Avenue building from which robust Borden President Harold W. Comfort, 66, bosses an operation stretching from Argentina to Australia. Milk and milk products still account for 73% of Borden's sales, but Borden's has diversified so widely--into everything from applesauce to acetylene, wall coverings to wax beans--that no one is surprised any longer at even the most incongruous mixes. Diversification last year helped push earnings to a record $32.4 million on $1 billion in sales, ranking second-place Borden (after National Dairy Products) an easy first in dairy industry profitability.
Cows on Shipboard. Borden's founder. Gail Borden, set up the company to condense milk after learning that some transatlantic ships carried herds of cows to keep passengers supplied with fresh milk. In 1875 the company moved into fresh milk, lapped up so many smaller dairies in the late 1920s that it was soon the biggest U.S. milk distributor. It did not spread far beyond milk products until the mid-1930s, when it developed its own synthetic resin glues for plywood, furniture and. eventually, automobile brake linings. After World War II, it moved on to other chemical products, including thermoplastic glues, and into plastics and formaldehyde (of which it is the biggest U.S. producer). It now turns out 800 chemical products and has worldwide chemical sales of $122 million. Last year it joined with U.S. Rubber in building a $25 million Louisiana complex to make acetylene and vinyl chloride monomer from natural gas.
Borden's has diversified most widely in foods. In the 1950s, it moved eagerly into convenience foods, putting the Borden label on new products (gelatin salads, packaged potatoes, refrigerated biscuits) and acquiring such smaller firms as Snow's (clams), Wyler's (dehydrated soups and vegetables). Brandywine (mushrooms) and ReaLemon (juices and concentrates). It is now the nation's fifth largest food company. To cut costs, it is building 14 to 18 automated warehouses to replace its 136 small warehouses around the U.S.. has so automated its plants that one man and three machines now do the biscuit making work once done by 60 women.
Dieters & Jerseys. Because bulk buying of milk in supermarkets has replaced home delivery, Borden's is moving away from its longtime role as one of the biggest U.S. milkmen. Now it acts principally as supplier, but it still has to worry about the threat to fat-rich dairy products from dieting and cholesterol consciousness. Borden's has met the challenge by producing its own 900-calorie Ready Diet and Lifeline, a lowfat, high-profit fortified milk. For dieters, it also pushes its buttermilk, skim milk and cottage cheese.
About the only thing that has not changed at Borden's in recent years is Elsie, the sloe-eyed Jersey that has long been Borden's trademark. Yet even Elsie has diversified, in a way. Thanks to the uniform color and appearance of Jerseys, Borden's uses several Elsies (one at a time) to tour the U.S., has also put Elsie's family to work: Elmer, her husband, is the trademark for Borden's chemicals.
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