Milling & Baking News - December 24, 2013 - 11

said. "We had expressed interest in it
before it came on the market. We very
much like the management team and
employees that came with it."
The expanded relationship with

McDonald's has contributed to a significant shift in the customer profile
of Guenther with food service now
accounting for 75% of revenues and
retail business accounting for the rest.
Mr. Tremblay said the ratio was reversed at the beginning of the century.
Other moves by the company aided
the shift. In 2005, Guenther acquired
Williams Foods, a maker of dry seasonings mixes and other meal enhancing products. The acquisition was
aimed at broadening Guenther's capabilities to meet the needs of food service and institutional customers.
More recently, the company made
a move in response to its sparse presence in a particular segment of the
food service industry, Mr. Tremblay
said.
"We bought Pizza Blends because
we weren't doing any business with
the pizza chains," he said.
Pizza Blends, acquired by Guenther in
2012, is a supplier of frozen and dry mix
pizza crusts and other blended flourbased products. The move achieved its
objective, Mr. Tremblay said.
While the two bun businesses

may be the most eye-catching part of
Guenther's acquisition in Canada, Mr.
Tremblay said the company is quite
excited about the third plant: Gizella
Pastry Ltd.
The company's product line includes frozen cheesecakes, cakes,
tortes, mousse cakes and dessert
squares. Mr. Tremblay said Gizella
represents a nice complement to
Guenther's other frozen businesses.
"It isn't that large but it gave us a
platform for entering
the market," he said.
"It's an additional move
into more value-added
products and lets us test
our way into the business."
Returning to the Tremblay
topic of U.S. baking,
Mr. Tremblay drew a clear distinction between the kinds of businesses
Guenther would and would not find
attractive.
"We're not looking into sliced bread
or anything that is commoditized," he
said. "There still are a lot of carriers
that are growing - flat breads, artisan.
Gluten-free is a question mark to us."
As to whether Guenther would consider establishing operations in additional countries, Mr. Tremblay said
it was more likely that the company
would seek to build on its base in the
three areas it now operates: Europe,
Canada and the United States.
"I don't see us dropping a business into, say, Japan or China unless
it would be large enough to give us a

Study shows adolescents get
boost from breakfast
TYNE, UNITED KINGDOM - Adolescents who consume ready-to-eat
breakfast cereal in the morning are
"more alert, satiated and content"
than those who don't eat breakfast, according to a new study from
researchers at the University of
Northumbria and University of
Essex in the United Kingdom.
The study, "The effect of breakfast
cereal consumption on adolescents'
cognitive performance and mood,"
was published in the November issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. In addition to improved mood,
the study found some positives related to cognitive performance.
As part of the study, which was
funded by the Kellogg Co., researchers examined 40 adolescents
bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

aged 13 to 15 years old at an innercity high school in the northeast
of England. The participants were
given either 35 grams of All-Bran
cereal and 125 ml of skimmed milk
or no breakfast. The participants
were tested prior to consumption of
breakfast and then 120 minutes after
consumption.
Cognitive load was examined by
varying the level of difficulty of a
series of tasks tapping memory, attention and executive functions.
Mood was measured with BondLader scales as well as measures
of thirst, hunger and satiety at
each test session both at baseline
and after the completion of each
test battery.
"Overall it appeared that following

big base of business from the start,"
he said.
Similarly, Mr. Tremblay does not see
expansion in U.S. flour milling as a
likely course for the business beyond
the two mills it operates in Texas. In
addition to its San Antonio mill, Guenther acquired Morrison Milling Co. in
Denton in 2006.
"I don't see us expanding in milling
unless we need it for our own products," he said. "The two plants serve
us well. It is the history of the business, but I'm not sure I'd go out and
buy a bunch of flour mills.
"We are not a commercial miller. We
are vertically integrated and don't sell
flour to the industry."
In fact, Guenther has become a large
buyer of flour, Mr. Tremblay said.
"We operate nine U.S. plants," he
said. "Two have mills. We are buying
for most of the other plants."
As a privately held company, C.H.
Guenther has achieved growth in recent years without access to public
capital.
"We manage our balance sheet carefully and use our credit facilities effectively," Mr. Tremblay said. "In spite
our acquisitions, we are still very conservative in our approach. Part of this
is that we have built our scale, and we
have enough business and cash flows
to allow us to make these acquisitions.
"It's not a high growth business,
and it's not sexy. We're good at it, and
we've brought good ideas to our customers. It's about how hard you want
to work at it." MBN
breakfast participants felt more
alert, satiated and content," the researchers said. "Following breakfast
consumption there was evidence for
improved cognitive performance
across the school morning compared to breakfast omission in some
tasks (e.g., Hard Word Recall, Serial
3's and Serial 7's). However, whilst
participants performance on the
hard version of each cognitive task
was significantly poorer compared
to the corresponding easy version,
there was limited evidence to support the hypothesis that the effect
of breakfast was greater in the more
demanding versions of the tasks."
The researchers said they looked
specifically at adolescents because
of the age group's rapid period of
growth, complexity of academic
work, tendency to skip breakfast
and ratio of brain size to body
weight. MBN
Milling & Baking News December 24, 2013 / 11

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Milling & Baking News - December 24, 2013

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