6/19/99:
Ocean Spray Cranberries chief to quit -Troubles include glut, competition by
Northland, by Corissa Jansen of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"I don't think it's appropriate for Northland to comment on
very difficult decisions at Ocean Spray at this time," John Swendrowski , President,
Northland Cranberries.
HERE6/18/99:Ocean Spray chief Bullock to leave troubled
cooperative By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff
''They were a monopoly for many years, now it's a competitive
environment, and it's not an environment they're comfortable in.'' John Decas, President, Decas Cranberry Products HERE
Chris Reidy's Globe article was picked up by the Knight-Ridder/ Tribune Business News
service serving 50+ Knight-Ridder owned newspapers (listed
here).
6/18/99: Boston Globe - Associated
Press announcement
"Despite the company's troubles, Ocean Spray reported sales of $1.48
billion for its last fiscal year ending Aug. 31, 3 percent more than the previous year. It
also reported profits of $280 million, up from $273 million the previous year."
HERE
6/16/99: Ocean Spray growers
can read the letter from Board Chairman Don Hatton in the Extra net HERE. |
Tom
Bullock Retires
6/16/99: Tom Bullock became President and CEO of Ocean Spray
in early 1997 with the promise to "reinvent the company and the cooperative". In
an interview in Harvest Magazine (Vol. 19 No.2 May 1997) he promised "this is
all about creating prosperity for grower/ owners. That's why we're in business: higher
returns per unit, a more valuable enterprise that they can have access to, a guaranteed
home for their fruit in the future and maintaining farming as a way of life for the next
generation."
Here's Bullock on competition from the same article: "As
category leaders we have to continue to lead from strength. It's like playing king of the
mountain when you're a kid. The guy on top is the winner. He has the advantage of working
from height. We're king of the mountain in the juice-drink business. There are a lot
of people who want to knock us off, though. If we weaken, they will bring us
down." There was no clarification as to which competition he was referring to,
companies like Northland, Decas and Hiller who were fighting for a relatively small
portion of the cranberry market, or the giant juice-drink beverage companies.
As he began his tenure, Bullock's prediction for the year
2005 was that Ocean Spray would still stand for cranberry and grapefruit with the core
consumers. However, his goal was expansion: "we have to get a younger audience, we
have to go for a more male audience, we have to go for a larger consumer audience than we
have right now, we have to be available in more places."
Until more information is released, readers may want to
review the PricewaterhouseCoopers Web Site here to
become familiar with a likely candidate for transition management, as it has world renown
expertise in "defining and facilitating change strategies and organizational
transformations". It also offers a Transaction Services which is "dedicated
to assisting clients with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, spinoffs
and strategic alliances."
Another company, with close ties to Ocean Spray, that has
much to offer is Fleishman-Hillard, a company that works "closely with top management of some of the largest
corporations in diverse areas such as senior management positioning programs, crisis
counseling, merger situations, labor disputes and issues management.
Fleishman-Hillard professionals have experience in crisis recovery, corporate identity
programs, mergers and acquisitions, and in effecting socioeconomic or legislative change."
McKinsey & Co. is
yet another top drawer management consulting company that may be in the running when
outside help is evaluated. They have a relevant article in their August 1997
online magazine (click here), "Corporations of the Future". It is well worth
reading. Here's a quote: "Large corporations convinced that size ensures
success often struggle to translate size and scale into customer value and profits. A lot
of our clients have been choking in their own complexity, resulting in little innovation
or employee fulfillment-and they are looking to us for answers."
It remains to be seen what, if any, role the ubiquitous Andersen Consulting firm will
have in Ocean Spray's future.
New readers interested in getting a sense of the
dissatisfaction among Ocean Spray grower/ owners prior to Tom Bullock's retirement
announcement, can read the two pages of over one hundred postings and responses in the Cranberry
Stressline Forum. You can also look at the article that, along with the Fourm, began
the transformation of a web site about farm stress to a news and opinion web site, here. Readership jumped
from 130 a month to 1,300 in March and then increased to over 3,000 in April, when an
Ocean Spray spokesman called it "odd and misguided" in a newspaper interview ("Web
page ammunition for modern-day David", New Bedford Standard Times, 4/14/99.) The
number of "hits" this month is already nearly 9,000. |
After
the fall, recovery isn't easy: lessons from the hog crisis
6/22/99
''American agriculture does the best job anywhere in the world in producing grain,
livestock, whatever it is, but somewhere along the line, I think we've gotten so busy with
production that we've not been very good marketers. ... We have to match production to
demand.'' Darrell Axtell, commodity broker. (Ed. note: Read the article, change the
"h" in hogs to "b"...) AP
Story in Boston Globe here
The future of Ag Co-ops
Source: Successful
Farming
6/20/99 Successful Farming Online's poll is
showing that over 50% of respondents don't think there's much hope for the future of new
agriculture co-ops, predicting that "new co-ops will be killed by processing giants
who can outbid and undersell them."
"Investing in new-generation
co-ops is something like investing in the stock market perhaps harder since
no central source of information exists about co-op financial performance. "
Read article
"Unite for Success: value-added co-ops help families capture greater margin in the
food chain" here.
Coke has its problems
Until 1959, the American people believed that retail food was always safe to eat.
Source: Fleishman-Hillard and BevNet
6/22/99 Troubles
Continue - read AP article here.
6/20/99 One participant in the Bevnet
Forum says the tainted Coke in Europe is the "Exxon Valdez of the Bev
industry" , writing "this crisis is the hugest ever in the industry -- While the
amount of people harmed is relatively small, the effect on Coke's brand should be
huge." Bevnet's own headlines project an
editorial slant that isn't found in the articles they link to: "Coca-Cola:Crisis in
Europe, Belgian Ban Reduced"; "Coke's reputation hurt"; and "Coke
Apologizes - Too little, too late."
Irony
Fleishman-Hillard has an excellent chapter
excerpt from Crisis Response: Inside Stories on Managing Image Under Siege which
you can read on their web site here. It
is interesting and perhaps ironic that the author,
Peter S. McCue, Senior Vice President and Director of the Corporate
Communications Group at F-H, writes on page 4 :
"Today's information pollution can
trace its roots back to The Great Cranberry Scare of 1959,
which marked the end of an age of innocence for consumers. The announcement came just
three weeks before Thanksgiving. The federal government had discovered samples of
cranberries laced with a weed killer known to be carcinogenic in rats. Consumers were
urged to avoid all cranberries except those which had been tested and approved by the
government." |