History of Dean Foods Co. Essay Example

found I Eastern Kentucky, West Virginia and Southeast Ohio. In New York and New Jersey, the standard brand is Tuscan Dairy Farms. The company has 100 facilities which are located in America across 35 states. It also has five manufacturing plants based in Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and France. Dean Foods Co. current CEO is Gregg A. Tanner. He is also the chairman of the board. The current number of employees sits at 21, 915 (Shurtleff and Akiko 1600).

Current Status of the company

Dean Foods Co. is in a very challenging industry. The company’s main focus is on the sale of dairy products, the sale of milk, tofu, and soy milk. Due to this ever increasing competition in a market that is unpredictable, the company has evolved over the years. One of the changes that the company did was in 2005. Dean Foods Co. where one of its brand, Bay Valley Foods was spun by LLC, which is a division of Treehouse Foods, Inc. Another major change that happened for the company is its acquisition of Jilbert’s Dairy. This acquisition happened in August 2006. The company wanted to extend its operations while keeping competition to a minimum. By June 2007, the company also had to give up some of its brands. One of the brands that were sold is the TofuTown brand which was acquired by the Hain Celestial group. Later that year, the company also purchased another dairy company in Iowa. Wells dairy plant which is based in Le Mars was bought by the company. This acquisition helped the company have its brands introduced to this area.

Due to the increasing competition in the market,

the company purchased Alpro. The acquisition carried a cost of US$455 million (Hendrix and Darrell 102). The purchase of Alpro happened in 2009 which led the company to be a global leader in soy beverages. After this purchase, the company had to do some structuring. Alpro was a big company, and it had an impact on the whole operations of Dean Foods Co. The company had to sell some of its subsidiaries. One such subsidiary that had to be sold was Rachel’s Organic (Meyer n.p) The company announced in 2015 that it will eliminate all of its regional brands. This changed was decided so that the company could concentrate on a single brand. The chosen brand was DairyPure, which was already being a sub-brand. The previous regional marketing scheme had used the brand DairyPure, and it had one of the best returns compared to other regional brands produced by the company across the 35 states that had its subsidiaries.

Dean Foods has been publically offered a couple of times. The latest time was in 2013 where the company had to divests its remaining shares. Its former CEO Gregg Engles owns 2,479,156 shares in the company (Meyer n.p) One of the structures that the company has insisted on is ensuring that they are environmentally friendly in all of its activities. This was written in its 2012 roadmap. The company’s main three strategies in reducing environmental impacts are; reduction of greenhouse emissions, proper water usage, and good solid waste disposal. The current non-executive Chairman of Board is Jim L. Turner, who has also been the director since 1997.

Janet Hill serves as Hill family Advisor while John R. Muse

is the Chairman of Kainos Capital, LLC. The share price of the company has had some sharp price drops lately. This happened in the second half of February 2016 (Yahoo.com). The price has made a small recovery, but it did not attract fresh buyers. In March, the prices continued to drop which suggested that the future of the company is not safe if changes are not made. The change was facilitated by the high competition in the market. Before this price drops, the company had lost about $645,000 in 2014 because of raw milk prices growing (Nytimes.com).

Future of Dean Foods Co.

With the share prices of Dean Food Co. dropping, the company will find it hard to raise capital through the use of issuing out shares. The marketing is getting competitive each day. Whitewave, for example, has developed, and it is growing each day at an alarming rate about Deans Food company. Another move that has made the future of the company look bleak is its neglect of regional brands. These brands were recognized in their respective regions but with the company deciding against developing it further, it has lost the regional appeal.

The company should develop its regional brands on a grand scale so that it can sieve the brands which perform poorly and retain those which have been spectacular in the market. The company has however acquired some companies. This has helped it wane off competitors in the region. The subsidiaries will also increase the revenue of the company thereby minimize loss through the drop in prices of shares. I think in five years the company will grow but at a slower rate. The pace

will be at a snail’s pace because of the competition, increase in prices of raw milk and the volatile share prices in the market. Small companies will struggle against the economies of scale of Dean Food Co. thereby allowing it to reap profits from its ardent customers.

Works Cited

• Nytimes.com. (2016). "Dean Foods Company". Topics.nytimes.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
• Hendrix, Jerry A, and Darrell C. Hayes. Public Relations Cases. Boston, MA: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2010. Print.
• Yahoo.com. (2016). "Dean Foods Company". Yahoo! Finance. N.p., 2016. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.
• Shurtleff, William, and Akiko Aoyagi. History of Soymilk and Other Non-Dairy Milks (1226 to 2013):
• Extensively Annotated Bibliography and Sourcebook. Lafayette, CA: Soyinfo Center, 2013. Print.
• Needles, Belverd E, Marian Powers, and Susan V. Crosson. Financial and Managerial Accounting. Mason, Ohio: South-Western, 2013. Print.
• Meyer, Nick. "The Story Of How Dean Foods Corrupted One Of America’S Top Organic Brands (Could Your Favorites Be Next?) | Althealthworks.Com". Althealthworks.com. N.p., 2013. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.