Milling & Baking News - September 12, 2017 - 1

THE NEWS WEEKLY OF GRAIN-BASED FOODS
SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

bakingbusiness.com / foodbusinessnews.net

WASHINGTON

Bread Industry Perspective

Heavy lifting - largest U.S. bakers
in midst of major restructuring

President Trump's
agenda: Delayed
or derailed?
Story on Page 32

LATE NEWS

Bimbo opens plant
in Colombia
HORSHAM, PA. - Grupo Bimbo
S.A.B. de C.V. has opened a new production plant and distribution center
in Tenjo, Colombia. The facility took
a year to build and cost $86 million,
Bimbo said. The plant has the capacity to produce 8 tons of product per
hour and has lines to make hamburger buns, snacks and puff-pastry buns,
a first for the Colombian market. According to the company, the proximity of the new facility to the original
Tenjo plant will foster logistics optimization, generate synergies and better facilitate the distribution process.
"The Tenjo plant is already making
Grupo Bimbo very proud and our
Continued on Page 8

©SYDA PRODUCTIONS - STOCK.ADOBE.COM

ales trends in the fresh bread category were weak once again over
the past year. While the decline in
unit sales was modest compared with
earlier years and very modest in dollars,
the nation's largest baking companies
have moved to reshape their businesses
to remain competitive and successful in
what has been a chronically flat market.
The realities of conditions in the U.S.
bread market were bluntly described recently by Allen L. Shiver, president and
chief executive officer of Flowers Foods,
Inc., Thomasville, Ga.
"We are realistic about the current
marketplace as we're seeing across the
packaged foods category, overall consumption in the bakery category is
down," he said in an Aug. 10 conference
call with investment analysts. "This is
putting pressure on volumes, and our
revised guidance reflects this reality. As

a result, we are increasing the urgency of
our cost-cutting efforts and our focus on
product innovation."
Fresh bread sales in the 52 weeks ended July 9 totaled $8,934 million, down
0.1% from a year earlier, according to
Information Resources, Inc., a Chicagobased market research firm. Unit sales of
3,775 million were down 0.7%. Private
Continued on Page 26

Hostess Brands' 'race for space'
includes innovation, new channels
BOSTON - While not yet at the old
company's sales levels, Hostess Brands,
Inc. has made great strides over the past
several years to put itself into a position
to expand market share, company executives noted during a Sept. 6 presentation at the Barclays Global Consumer
Staples Conference in Boston.
William D. Toler, president and chief
executive officer of Hostess, described

the Kansas City-based company's theme
for 2017 as a "race for space."
"Our goal was to get five new items
in," Mr. Toler said. "We had a couple of
items that we discontinued ourselves
to keep the category fresh and keep the
products moving. We've gained about
that number of net items that we expected to gain, 10% growth in total distribution points this year. And to continue to
drive that penetration in channels that is
enabled by the warehouse model. That's
your downscale C-stores, the bodegatype outlets. Those are places where
we believe we can be very effective. So
those are all areas that we're working on
to get out there."
In 2017, Hostess has about 22 items on
Continued on Page 10

http://www.bakingbusiness.com http://www.foodbusinessnews.net http://STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Milling & Baking News - September 12, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Milling & Baking News - September 12, 2017