Baking&Snack - March 2014 - 12

EDITORIAL STAFF
Editor
Executive Editor

Extraordinary times
for this industry

Within the past year or so, we have been tempted to describe current events as
"extraordinary times" in grain-based foods to the point that it seems unnecessary,
even redundant, to declare what has occurred in recent weeks as without parallel
in this industry's long history. Looking over the past year or two that saw truly
cosmic-like events announced in both wholesale baking and flour milling, the
cumulative impact emerges to stand today as not just extraordinary, but historymaking in every sense. At no other period in a long history has the fundamental
structure of both bread baking and wheat flour milling been transformed in such
a total or striking manner as now under way. It has attained the point where the
industry of grain-based foods is on the verge of being totally different from what
it was a short time ago.
Baking comes first to mind in view of the announcement that Grupo Bimbo, the
Mexico City-based baking giant, is acquiring Canada Bread Co. to give it ownership
of the largest baking business in Canada. Considering that Bimbo in the past two
years purchased baking operations that gave it unquestioned leadership of the US
wholesale baking market, that it is the baking leader in several top Latin American
markets, and that it has interests in Europe and the Far East, this full-bore move into
Canada gives it a near sweep of Western Hemisphere bread baking. Bimbo has accomplished a corporate transformation surpassing what might only once have been
dreamed of in any industry, much less the one in which it was done.
As if Bimbo's moves were not enough, the vast changes occurring in the past year
in the make-up of the balance of baking's leadership companies unfolded a scenario
of huge change in baking's structure. Putting all of this into the reality - no longer
just vision - of an industry totally transformed is no exaggeration.
Baking's presence in almost every part of the food system, in both developed and
developing nations where Bimbo has moved and grown, might appear to give it unprecedented importance to how grain-based foods evolves. No company in baking
is more aware than Bimbo of how its success depends not just on what it achieves
internally but on the products, services and much else it obtains from suppliers
of all sorts. It is the fundamental restructuring of baking that accounts
in part for the pending merger in flour milling to join the mills of
Cargill-CHS and ConAgra Foods into a new company that would
be the largest milling operation in the world.
It is not beyond imagination that everyone in the industry
having a front-row seat to such momentous events is going
to be able to examine these times as not just extraordinary
historically, but exceptional from the viewpoint of each person's own experience. Already obvious is that what has happened in baking and in milling mark a great forward step in
the proud history of what now must be wisely called the new
grain-based foods industry.
- Morton Sosland
msosland@sosland.com

12 Baking & Snack March 2014 / www.bakingandsnack.com

Managing Editor
Associate Editor

Dan Malovany
dmalovany@sosland.com
Laurie Gorton
lgorton@sosland.com
Joanie Spencer
jspencer@sosland.com
Charlotte Atchley
catchley@sosland.com

Ryan Atkinson
ratkinson@sosland.com
Contributing Editors:
Donna Berry
donnaberry@dairy-food.com
Theresa Cogswell
bakercogs@sbcglobal.net
Jim Kline
jkline@theensolgroup.com
Joe Stout
joe.stout@cf-san.com
Assistant Editor

DESIGN STAFF
Design Services Manager Sadowna Conarroe
Designer
Ryan Cain
Manager of Advertising Design Becky White
Classified Ad Layout
Christina Sullivan
PUBLISHING STAFF
Chairman
Charles S. Sosland
Vice-Chairman
L. Joshua Sosland
President
Mark Sabo
Publishing Director
G. Michael Gude
Publisher
Paul Lattan
Vice-President,
Chief Financial Officer
Melanie Hepperly
Audience Development Director Don Keating
Director of E-Business
Jon Hall
Advertising Manager
Nora Wages
Ad Materials Coordinator
Debbie Maniez
Digital Systems Analyst
Marj Potts
Circulation Manager
Judy Tinberg
Director of Online
Advertising & Promotions Carrie Fluegge
Promotions Manager
Lon Davis

Editorial and Midwest Sales Office
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Phone: (816) 756-1000; Fax: (816) 756-0494
E-mail: BakingSnack@sosland.com
Internet: www.bakingandsnack.com

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Baking&Snack - March 2014

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