Our Journey... We Are Transforming

In our industrial business, we have sharpened our focus. We are now concentrating our efforts on meeting the needs and demands of the global leaders among food manufacturers and in the food service industry. These are our largest and most strategic customers, and they offer us significant growth potential – during 2006, we supplied less than 25% of the seasonings, coating and other flavors they purchased.

     To take advantage of this growth opportunity, we have been directing our resources toward more-profitable, faster-growing customers and away from less-profitable, slower-growing customers. This effort has reduced the number of our industrial business customers in the U.S. – from 1,000 to fewer than 750 – and significantly increased our growth and profit potential. The smaller customers we dropped made minimal purchases – they made up 25% of our customers, but accounted for only 2% of our industrial business sales. We will continue to reduce the types and numbers of customers – and products – that don't have growth and profit opportunities in line with our goals and strategies.

     Our transformation has included not only an increased focus on strategic customers, but also a reorganization of our sales force and an invigorated emphasis on exploring growth opportunities. It has led to renewed energy and momentum in our industrial business – as well as to several successful new product launches during 2006, including snack seasonings, chicken coatings and beverage flavors. By the end of 2008, our goal is to increase the operating income margin for our industrial business by 2.5-to-3.5 percentage points.

At our CreateIT®Center – which we opened in early 2007 – we engage strategic industrial customers at the front end of their process to discuss trends and develop winning new product ideas.