Kerry Group today is a world leader in food ingredients and flavours serving the food and beverage industry, and a leading supplier of added value brands and customer branded foods to the Irish and UK markets. The Group has grown organically and through a series of strategic acquisitions in its relatively short history, from the commissioning of its first dairy and ingredients plant in Listowel, Ireland in 1972, and has achieved sustained profitable growth with current annualised sales of approximately €4.5 billion.Headquartered in Tralee, Ireland, the Group employs over 20,000 people throughout its manufacturing, sales, technology and application centres across Europe, North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Asian Markets. Kerry supply over 15,000 food, food ingredients and flavour products to customers in more than 140 countries worldwide. Kerry have established manufacturing facilities in 20 different countries and international sales offices in 20 other countries across the globe. Launched as a public company in 1986, Kerry Group plc is listed on the Dublin and London Stock Markets and has a current market capitalisation in excess of €3.5 billion.

Snappy Popcorn Company grows, processes, sells, and distributes popcorn, along with popcorn supplies (oils, seasonings, bag) under the Snappy and Marly's Gourmet labels. Snappy Popcorn company also offers popcorn popping machines, and other snack-food-concession equipment, including cotton-candy, slush, shaved ice, corn-dog, nacho, funnel-cake and caramel-apple makers. Its customers includes movie theaters and other foodservice outlets, as well as schools, communities, and fundraising groups. Snappy Popcorn company offers also private-label products and services. In addition to processing and packaging, snappy popcorn company grows its own popcorn variety corn.

If you thought only Cookie Monster bought cookies in bulk, talk to the folks at Voortman Cookies. The company bakes up to 20 million cookies daily and distributes them to more than 50,000 grocery stores throughout Canada and the US. Voortman's cookies and wafers are sold in packages and from bulk display units. Voortman cookies contain no trans fatty acids (hydrogenated vegetable oils), a move made to position its cookies as being a healthier alternative to other cookie brands. An affiliated bakery, also named Voortman Cookies and operated by some of co-founder William Voortman's children, sells cookies in the southwestern US.

In 1971 Sanford Winery and Vineyards discovered an overlooked, grape-growing treasure in the Santa Rita Hills. Recognizing a magical combination of climate and soil conditions much like those in France's famed Burgundy province, Sanford planted the area's first Pinot Noir in its Sanford & Benedict vineyard.Pinot Noir has thrived in the Santa Rita Hills ever since, and so has Sanford Winery. The pioneering winery's Pinot Noir ranks among the best and most distinctive in the world. And Sanford's leadership helped put Santa Barbara and the Santa Rita Hills on the map of the world's great wine regions. Certified as an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in 2001, today the area is renowned for its Chardonnay as well as Pinot Noir. The Santa Rita Hills AVA is 100 square miles of heaven for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and Sanford's estate vineyards - Rancho La Rinconada and Sanford & Benedict - lie within it. Sanford relies exclusively on these vineyards for its luscious, signature Pinots.The area owes its magic to an unusual east-west mountain valley that runs from the vineyards to the Pacific Ocean. This passage allows a meteorological ebb-and-flow between the mountains and the sea that is ideal for cool-climate varietals.

In 1932, Karl Ehmer started his first butcher shop on 46th Street and Second Avenue in New York City, NY. Due to the depression, Mr. Ehmer was forced to make product at night and work a full time job uptown during the day. Mrs. Ehmer ran the shop during the daylight hours. In the 1940's, as times improved, Mr. Ehmer began to look for a larger manufacturing facility and found one in a German community in Queens, called Ridgewood. From this facility he manufactured products for six stores.Karl Ehmer is where you expect the wurst, and you'll get it. The company specializes in traditional German sausages and other meats, selling its wares at retail stores and to wholesale customers. Karl Ehmer's started with a single butcher's shop in Manhattan in 1932, then later moved to a German-American community in Queens, where its headquarters remains. The retail chain has dwindled to about 10 stores (five of which are in New York), but the company has stepped up its sales to regional distributors, high-end food emporiums like Dean & DeLuca, and other grocers, while also selling through its Web site. Brothers Mark and Alan Hanssler, grandsons of Karl Ehmer himself, acquired the company in 1993.

They've got an awful lot of coffee in Florida, home of Rowland Coffee Roasters, one of North America's largest privately-owned producers of coffee products in the US. If espresso is your thing, you're likely drinking a blend of coffee from Rowland, which roasts 80% of all espresso coffee sold in the US and owns the two top espresso brands, Bustelo and Pilon. The company also sells European blends (Caffe Signore, Medaglia D'Oro) and Cabana blends (Estrellla, El Pico, and Oquendo). The family-run company was established in Cuba in 1865. The founder's son, Jose Angel "Pepe" Souto, died in 2007. His children continue to oversee the business.

Tropics Frozen Cocktails, which does business as Tropics Frozen Beverages, offers a variety of nonalcoholic fruit and dairy smoothie and cocktail mixes sold under the Tropics name. Mixes are flash pasteurized. In addition to its mixes, the company also offers promotional signs, menus, and chalkboards as well as the mixing and blending equipment needed to serve frozen drinks.

Turning a delicious but odd-shaped fruit into a household favorite wasn’t in the plan when a group of grower-hobbyists banded together in 1924 to form the California Avocado Growers Exchange. And two more years would pass before Rudolph Hass of La Habra, California, would plant the state’s first Hass avocado tree.At the time, avocado growers had no quality standards, no distribution channels, and only one facility, a packinghouse in Vernon, California. During that first year, the Growers Exchange packed 18,000 pounds of avocados from that packinghouse and, in doing so, launched an industry.Though the Vernon packinghouse has long since closed, the company that sprang from that Growers’ Exchange - now known as Calavo Growers, Inc. - is still going strong some 81 years later. In 2005, this publicly traded, diversified, global agribusiness packed approximately 35 percent of the California avocado crop, nearly double the market share of its closest competitor. Three modern packinghouses - strategically located in Santa Paula and Temecula, California, and Uruapan, Michoacan, Mexico - teem with productivity and thrive on volume, packing approximately 200 million pounds per year. The company is now headquartered in Santa Paula, California and employs more than 500 people.

This bunch of Florida siblings Lykes land, lots o' land. Family-owned Lykes Bros. concentrates its efforts on its 337,000 acres of land holdings -- which is home to the company's diverse operations, which include cattle ranching (20,000 head), forestry, and sod and sugarcane farms. The company also grows landscaping trees, leases grazing and farm land, oversees pine and eucalyptus forests, and offers hunting (deer, quail, turkey) and fishing tours on its 1,867-acre Silver Lake Preserve. The company was founded by Dr. Howell Tyson Lykes in 1900 and is owned by the descendants of his seven sons.

n 2008, Danone recorded an organic growth rate of 8.4% — practical proof that its business growth model truly works. With its operating margin increasing for the 14th year running, the group further strengthened its global standing: world no. 1 in fresh dairy products, world no. 2 in bottled waters, world no. 2 in baby nutrition and European no. 1 in medical nutrition. The group’s performance is the result of a balanced strategy that builds on international expansion, a growing commitment to innovation, and strengthening health-oriented brands. In order to live up to its ambitions, Danone invests heavily in Research & Development — €208 million in 2008. One hundred percent of projects currently in the pipeline focus on health and nutrition. Three centuries after the benefits of Evian mineral water were discovered, over a century after Blédine was first marketed, and nearly a century after the first Danone yoghurt was retailed in a pharmacy, health innovation remains more than ever a driver of the group’s business growth. 2008 confirmed that the previous year’s acquisition of the Dutch group Numico was strategically sound. With this move, Danone incorporated into its strategy two profitable, fast-growing health-oriented business lines: medical nutrition and baby nutrition. They naturally round off the group’s brand portfolio and are perfectly aligned with its mission to bring health through food to as many people as possible. Today Danone is the only food group to focus totally on health.

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