Cargill today released its 2012 Corporate Responsibility Report. Entitled Our Responsibility in a Changing World, it reports on the four pillars of the company’s approach to corporate responsibility: conducting business with integrity; working to feed the world; operating responsible supply chains; and enriching our communities.
General Mills, Minneapolis, Minnesota, US, remains overly reliant on the North American market. Its international breakfast cereals presence falls to Lausanne, Switzerland-based Cereal Partners Worldwide, a joint venture with Nestlé, Vevey, Switzerland. The company indicated, however, that emerging markets are its new focus for growth with Brazil one of the most likely to benefit from its investment.
Even as major food processing companies worldwide place an ever-increasing emphasis on achieving a global reach, the trend toward internationalization has mostly eluded the wholesale baking industry. Among major US baking companies, few have any presence beyond the nation’s borders. The principal exception is Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV, Mexico’s largest baking company and now the largest baker in the US.
Integrating robots into bakeries’ packaging areas can greatly reduce labor requirements for placing unwrapped baked foods into infeed conveyors or to put primary-packaged products into carton or secondary packaging. Robots are tireless workers, operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week without fail.
Africa is hot in the packaged food market. The continent’s changing demographic profile, increasing urbanization and concurrent increase in discretionary spending all point to increased growth. Food corporations have consequently become more active in key countries of interest as the race to secure positions in new emerging markets intensifies.
Milling & Baking News’ exclusive interview of Daniel Servitje, CEO of Grupo Bimbo, SAB de CV, was preceded by a half-day tour of Bimbo’s baking complex at Azcapotzalco in the northwest part of Mexico City. Dating to 1972, the facility represented a “quantum leap” forward by the company when it opened, said Rosalio Rodriguez, Grupo Bimbo chief of operations.
Barry Callebaut has paid €2.4 million in premiums for Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa. This payment will benefit 45 cocoa cooperatives and more than 12,000 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire. Farmers receive half of the premium while the other half is retained by the cooperative and used to provide services to its farmer members or for community facilities. The farmers and cooperatives received the premium payments for the delivery of more than 15,000 metric tonnes of certified cocoa during the 2011/12 cocoa season.
