Food Business News - July 3, 2012 - 1

FOODBUSINESS NEWS
NEWS, MARKETS AND ANALYSIS FOR THE FOOD PROCESSING INDUSTRY

July 3, 2012

www.foodbusinessnews.net

Higher costs weigh on General Mills earnings
MINNEAPOLIS — Executives at General Mills, Inc. hope a restructuring program put in place in May will help the company rebound from a difﬁcult ﬁscal 2012 in which higher input cost inﬂation contributed to a 13% decline in full-year earnings. For the year ended May 27, the company had earnings of $1,567.3 million, equal to $2.42 per share on the common stock, compared with $1,798.3 million, or $2.80 per share, during ﬁscal 2011. Sales for the year were $16,657.9 million, up 12% from $14,880.2 million during ﬁscal 2011. For the fourth quarter ended May 27, earnings were up 2% at $325.4 million, or 50c per share, which compared with Continued on Page 11

Story on Page 35

Study sees shift in food-at-home trends
NEW YORK — A conﬂuence of factors appear poised to rapidly transform the food-at-home industry, according to a new study from Jefferies Group, Inc., a global investment bank, and AlixPartners, a global business advisory ﬁrm. The study, titled “Trouble in aisle 5,” included a survey of 2,000 adult grocery shoppers during mid-May. It found changing demographics, economic inﬂuences and customer preferences have the potential to create long-term disruption across the food industry value chain. Speciﬁcally, the rise of the millennials and aging of the baby boomer generation will be a major factor affecting buying Continued on Page 25

U.S.D.A. conﬁrms tart cherry disaster, mixed outlook for other fruits, vegetables
hree key reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture last week provided fresh insight into U.S. fruit and vegetable crops for 2012. Most dramatic was the department’s Cherry Production report that conﬁrmed the loss of nearly all the tart cherry crop in top-producing Michigan and a 68% plunge nationally from 2011 production.

The U.S.D.A. also released its quarterly Vegetables and Pulses Outlook and Fruit and Tree Nuts Outlook, both less dramatic than the cherry report but not less informative. “The majority of (Michigan) growers lost all of their harvestable crop this year,” the U.S.D.A. said in its annual Cherry Production report. Tart cherry production in Michigan was forecast at 5.5 million lbs, down 97% from 157.5 million lbs in 2011 and compared with annual production of 184 million lbs in the prior ﬁve years. For the United States, forecast tart cherry production of 73.1 million lbs (36,550 tons) would be the smallest crop since 62.5 million lbs in 2002, when the Michigan crop was sliced to 15 million lbs in a similar weather scenario. That year brought a sizeable carryover from a crop of 370.1 million lbs in 2001, the second largest Continued on Page 26

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Food Business News - July 3, 2012

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