World Grain - January 2012 - 33

A ﬂour art museum story | No. 2

Former ConAgra Mills President tackles new challenge
As president of ConAgra Mills for seven years, Paul T. Maass constantly was confronted with building demand for a healthful staple — enriched ﬂour — that was routinely criticized in the media and by segments of the nutrition community. As president of the Commercial Foods business for ConAgra Foods, Inc., his assignment has not become easier. In addition to ConAgra Mills, the division includes the Lamb Weston potato business, about double the size of the company’s milling business. Like standard white ﬂour, potatoes are sometimes dismissed as lacking nutritional value, Maass said. Describing the criticism as unjust, he noted potatoes are a very concentrated source of potassium — signiﬁcantly higher than foods commonly associated with potassium content, like bananas and oranges. They also are a good source of vitamin C. “Potatoes are very affordable and provide important nutrients that can be lacking in people’s diets,” Maass said. At a most simplistic level, Maass’s role at ConAgra Foods, Inc. has changed only modestly. Instead of managing one white starchy staple, as he did as president of ConAgra Mills, he now has responsibility for two (in addition to the smaller Spicetec Flavorings & Seasonings and J.M. Swank businesses). A year after becoming president of the Commercial Foods division of ConAgra Foods, it is clear the reality is not nearly so simple. Maass discussed the Commercial Foods business generally and the ConAgra Foods Lamb Weston frozen potato business in particular in a recent interview conducted by Milling & Baking News, sister publication of World Grain, in Omaha, Nebraska, U.S. In candid remarks, Maass said the ﬁrst year on the job veered from the initial game plan. Still, amid the challenges of the work, Maass has retained an amiable manner and a generous sense of humor.
www.World-Grain.com / World Grain / January 2012

Grinding ﬂour for a pyramid.
As president of Commercial Foods, Paul Maass has oversight of the largest potato processing company in the United States.
When you visit the pyramids in Egypt, you ﬁnd yourself wondering how they built these massive structures. The answer is, with careful planning and thousands of workers. But how could they feed that many people well enough to do heavy labour, 4000 years ago? With bread, of course. Each worker got a kilo a day. And every day, over 10,000 women were kept busy grinding the grain for bakeries that fed up to 40,000 workers on the construction site. The women doing the grinding had to toil over their grindstones eight hours a day to meet their quota. This is a replica of a statuette of such a grinder, the original of which was found in an Egyptian grave. It can be seen in the ﬂour art museum in Wittenburg, Germany. The statuette is thousands of years old, but still gives a vivid impression of the tedious effort it was to grind ﬂour in those days. It also reminds us that the pyramids were built not only with careful planning and thousands of workers, but also by the hard work of women behind the scenes. www.ﬂour-art-museum.de www.muehlenchemie.de
For more information, see Page 98.

“Now I’m Mr. Potato Head,” Maass said, holding up the Hasbro toy given upon his promotion in 2010 by his milling colleagues. Kidding aside, Maass is all business when it comes to the large and proﬁtable enterprise he oversees. In ﬁscal year 2011, the Commercial Foods division of ConAgra Foods generated sales totaling $4.3 billion, or 35% of the company total. Operating proﬁt of $539 million was 34% of ConAgra Foods’ total operating proﬁt. Maass said his ability to roll up his sleeves and engross himself in the potato business was made possible by a culture of talent development at ConAgra Mills. The culture allowed the new ConAgra Mills president, Bill Stoufer, to hit the ground running, Maass said. “There is a huge beneﬁt to being able to promote within,” Maass said. “Bill was very successful at ConAgra Mills and an integral part in what we were doing. It was seamless — plug and play. We have very different styles, but the organization did not have to miss a beat. “In general, developing and managing talent is a critical part of a successful business.” Maass has been with ConAgra Foods

http://www.flour-art-museum.de http://www.muehlenchemie.de http://www.World-Grain.com

World Grain - January 2012

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