Milling & Baking News - February 18, 2014 - 7

Editorial



Extraordinary time for this industry

ithin the past year or so this page frequent- foods, its base derives from humankind's most imly has been tempted to describe current portant food: bread. Bimbo's strategy reflects not
events as "extraordinary times" in grain- just faith in and support for the centrality and qualbased foods to the point that it seems unnecessary, ity of the principal product of grain-based foods, but
even redundant, to declare what has occurred in re- of its own total commitment to thoughtful, careful
cent days as without parallel in this industry's long and skillful management of people, assets and rehistory. Looking back on a period extending over the sources. Only then could Bimbo have undertaken
past year or two that saw truly cosmic-like events an- these amazing moves that reflect a nearly unlimited
nounced in both wholesale baking and flour milling, geographic ambition.
the cumulative impact emerges to stand today as not
Keeping watch over, if not abreast of, Bimbo's acjust extraordinary, but history-making in every sense. tions has become very much the principal task of its
At no other period in a long history has the funda- major competitors in wholesale baking. As if Bimbo's
mental structure of both bread baking and wheat moves were not enough, the vast changes occurring
flour milling been transformed in such a total or strik- in the past year in the make-up of the balance of baking manner as now under way. It has attained the ing's leadership companies unfolded a scenario of
point where the industry of grain-based foods is on huge change in baking's structure. Putting all of this
the verge of being totally different from what it was a into the reality - no longer just vision - of an inshort time ago.
dustry totally transformed is no
At no other period in a long
Baking comes first to mind in
exaggeration.
history has the fundamental
view of the announcement last
Baking's presence in almost
week that Grupo Bimbo, the Mexievery part of the food system, in
structure of both bread
co-based baking giant, is acquiring
both developed and developing
baking and wheat flour
Canada Bread Co. to give it ownnations where Bimbo has moved
milling been transformed
ership of the largest baking busiand grown, might appear to give it
in such a total or striking
ness in Canada. Considering that
unprecedented importance to how
manner as now under way.
Bimbo in the past two years purgrain-based foods evolves. Baking
chased baking operations that gave it unquestioned is only one part of grain-based foods. No company in
leadership of the U.S. wholesale baking market, that baking is more aware than Bimbo of how its success
it is the baking leader in several top Latin American depends not just on what it achieves internally but on
markets, and that it has interests in Europe and the the products, services and much else it obtains from
Far East, this full-bore move into Canada gives it a suppliers of all sorts. Once a leading flour miller itself
near sweep of Western Hemisphere bread baking. in Mexico, Bimbo as part of its dramatic remake has
Bimbo has accomplished a corporate transformation separated milling into a company it no longer owns.
surpassing what might only once have been dreamed It is the fundamental restructuring of baking that acof in any industry, much less the one in which it counts in part for the pending merger in flour milling
was done.
to join the mills of Cargill-CHS and ConAgra Foods
All hail to Daniel Servitje, the chairman and chief into a new company that would be the largest milling
executive of Bimbo, whose family, under his direc- operation in the world.
tion, has guided Bimbo to these unprecedented
Completion of this milling merger is now indicated
heights. Billions of dollars have been invested under for the second quarter of this year depending on the
Bimbo's name and credit to acquire baking business- outcome of negotiations with the Justice Department
es to create a group that appears hell-bent not just and other unspecified details. The large size of this
on leadership in a single hemisphere but on creating venture partly makes up for what has been relative
Continued on Page 10
a globe-circling business. Happily for grain-based
MORTON I. SOSLAND, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
WE'RE EAGER TO GET YOUR FEEDBACK: E-mail editor@sosland.com or write to us at
Milling & Baking News, 4800 Main Street, Suite 100, Kansas City, Mo, 64112
EDITORIAL STAFF
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Morton I. Sosland
Executive editor, markets
Neil N. Sosland
Editor
L. Joshua Sosland
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Ron Sterk
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7bakingbusiness.com Milling & Baking News
/ March 13, 2007 / world-grain.com

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Milling & Baking News - February 18, 2014

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