To view D-brief online, visit www.dbrief.org

September 15, 2004

Kraft puts Breyers yogurt on market...Dean to stop production of weight-loss drinks...Crowley Foods wins 10 medals at N.Y. State Fair...Hurricane Ivan threatens Florida agriculture...Oberweis launches franchise opportunities...Dairy People News... Kroger earnings fall in second quarter...Grocery workers vote to extend contract in Colorado...Wal-Mart wins approval for Supercenter in L.A...Odds-and-Ends...Stock Market Ticker...More news at www.idfa.org.

DAIRY BUSINESS BRIEFS

Kraft Foods Inc., Northfield, Ill., plans to sell off its Breyers yogurt brand. Chief Executive Officer Roger Deromedi has frequently stated the company's plan to divest itself of non-essential brands. Breyers remains far behind category leaders Yoplait and Dannon, which sources speculate is the reason Kraft is parting with the brand. At $118 million a year in sales, Breyers yogurt brings in just a fraction of Kraft's $31 billion in annual revenue. The Breyers yogurt line split from the ice cream line in 1993, which was sold to Unilever Plc. (Chicago Sun-Times)

Dallas-based Dean Foods announced it will stop production of its weight-loss shakes and drinks Nov. 7 due to poor sales. Dean's nutritional-drinks plant in Michigan, which makes the Healthy Shake Weight Loss Beverage and the Bonus Nutritional Supplement, will close in the fourth quarter. Earnings will drop by roughly $10.2 million because of costs associated with the exit from the nutritional drinks category, including work force reductions and facility closure costs. (Associated Press)

Florida is hoping that Hurricane Ivan won't do much additional damage to its battered agriculture industry. The state's agriculture department estimates that Hurricanes Charley and Frances have already caused losses of more than $2 billion in dairy, cattle, citrus and other industries. Martin County alone reports that 75 percent of ranch land is flooded. Railroad lines have begun to shut down, preventing feed from getting to ranchers. A reported 300,000 gallons of milk were dumped during Hurricane Frances because no tankers could bring the product to stores. Consumers are likely to see prices rise as demand overwhelms supply. (Stuart News, Stuart, Fla.)

Oberweis Dairy, North Aurora, Ill., will offer up to 500 franchise retail shops in a seven-state area, and hopes to have as many as 175 company-owned and franchise-owned stores within two years. The first targets will be Milwaukee and Indianapolis, where it already offers home delivery of its milk products. Other expansion targets include Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Detroit; it is likely that home delivery services would also be extended. The dairy recorded about $50 million in sales last year, with roughly 42.5 percent of sales via its existing 33 dairy stores. (Chicago Tribune)

DAIRY PEOPLE NEWS

Jim Stevens, who began working at Maytag Dairy Farm as a teenager and eventually became president of the company, has retired. Stevens, 76, worked for Maytag, maker of Maytag Blue Cheese, for 59 years. He started by scrubbing mold off wheels of blue cheese and ended his career as CEO and president, which he was named in 1992. The farm produced nearly 1 million pounds of blue cheese last year. (Newton Daily News, Newton, Iowa)...The Federation of Swiss Milk Producers awarded Professor David McCarron its 2004 International Prize for Modern Nutrition. McCarron, a visiting professor at the Department of Nutrition at the University of California-Davis, was recognized for his research linking nutrition, particularly calcium intake, to a reduction in high blood pressure. His work shows the importance of a calcium-rich diet in the reduction of obesity, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis and kidney stones. (Company report)...The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board named Jean Demmacco Northeast regional marketing manager. The Red Bank, N.J., resident will manage Wisconsin cheese retail marketing and promotions in the area. She has cheese sales and marketing management experience under such brands as Kraft and Churny and has broker and distributor experience working with service deli cheese programs. (WMMB report)...In Passing: Helen Hibben Turner, 93, of Winnetka, Ill., whose father was Ira J. Mix, owner of the Mix Dairy (later bought out by Bowman Dairy), died Sept. 5. As a teenager, Turner won an advertising award for her slogan promoting her father's dairy: "Mix Milk With Your Meals." (Chicago Tribune)

CUSTOMER CLIPS

Still reeling from the southern California supermarket strike that ended in February, Cincinnati-based Kroger Co. announced that its second quarter earnings fell nearly $50 million from a year ago. Second quarter net earnings totaled $142.4 million, but were reduced by $15.3 million after Kroger chose to pay debt early on $750 million in financial notes set to be redeemed in March. Second quarter sales rose 5 percent to $13 billion, up slightly from $12.3 billion during the same period last year. Kroger's earnings per share of 19 cents for the quarter fell short of the projected 27 cents per share. (Associated Press)

Unionized grocery store workers in Colorado agreed to extend their five-year contract until Oct. 16, temporarily averting a strike. Federal mediators proposed the extension that covers 17,000 workers. The workers overwhelmingly approved the extension on Sept. 11. They also voted to reject the latest offers from Safeway, Pleasanton, Calif., King Soopers (owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger) and Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons. In addition, workers voted to approve a strike if a new contract is not reached by Oct. 16. At issue are the grocery chains' proposals to shift more of the burden of health care costs to workers and to reduce wages for new employees. (Associated Press)

Wal-Mart, Bentonville, Ark., won approval Sept. 8 to build its first Supercenter in Los Angeles County, Calif. Weeks of debate and political opposition preceded the vote by the Rosemead City Council. Opponents, afraid the store would lower wages and further hurt the already depressed local economy, have fought to keep Wal-Mart stores out of the area. Ultimately, city council members could not pass up the $640,000 in annual sales taxes the Wal-Mart is expected to bring to Rosemead. Wal-Mart hopes to build as many as 40 Supercenters in California in the next four years. (Los Angeles Times)

IDFA NEWS

BevExpo 2004 Opens in Tampa in Two Weeks
Pre-registration has been strong for BevExpo 2004 in Tampa, September 29-October 1, and thousands of milk, juice and other beverage industry executives are expected at the show in two weeks. Registration is still open online at www.bevexpo.com; online hotel reservations are closed, but hotel numbers are provided to call directly. BevExpo will feature state-of-the-art exhibits on processing, quality control, packaging, ingredients and formulation systems, sales and marketing, distribution and merchandising. A comprehensive conference program will cover global and domestic trends in bottled water, milk drinks, juice and juice drinks, soft drinks and enhanced beverages. For more information and to register, click here.

ODDS-AND-ENDS

De Oaxaca will open a cheese plant in Fowler, Calif., to produce cheese for its California restaurants. The company claims making its own cheese will be easier than buying it from other cheese processors. The company expects the 4,000-square-foot plant to produce about 6,000 pounds of cheese a day. The restaurants use about 2,000 pounds of cheese a week. The company also said it expects to buy roughly 4,500 gallons of milk a week from Fresno-area dairies. (Fresno Bee)...Quarterbacks Brett Favre of the Green Bay Packers and Jake Delhomme of the Carolina Panthers scored big with their debut as 3-A-Day of Dairy spokesmen and "got milk?" milk mustache celebrities. The QBs, who went head-to-head Sept. 13 in the NFL's first Monday Night Football game of the season, also faced each other in that day's USA Today with a "got milk?" ad. They and other NFL stars will be featured in life-size standees and growth posters on display in 31,000 school cafeterias with the tag: "Milk: The Power Behind the Play."...The purchasing units of Quality Chekd Dairies Inc., Naperville, Ill., and SECO & Golden "100", DeLand, Fla., combined to form QCS Purchasing LLC, The new entity formalizes a joint venture between the two companies that started in 2001. QCS member services will include reduced-cost materials for dairy businesses. (Company report)

STOCK MARKET TICKER

As of 9/14/04, market close.

Company/Symbol		Last Trade		Change over Previous Close		Change over Last Week's D-brief
ConAgra Foods/CAG Dean Foods/DF Dreyer's/DRYR General Mills/GIS Groupe Danone/DA Hershey Foods/HSY Ingles Markets/IMKTA Kraft Foods/KFT Kroger/KR Ruddick Corp./RDK Safeway/SWY Saputo/SAP.TO SuperValu/SVU Unilever PLC/UL Weis Markets/WMK Wimm Bill Dann/WBD Winn-Dixie/WIN		27.05 31.00 79.68 46.85 16.01 48.31 11.64 31.82 15.98 19.82 20.53 32.23 27.29 35.50 35.47 13.04 04.28		-0.12 +0.75 -0.10 +0.14 +0.03 +0.06 +0.00 +0.02 -0.72 +0.02 -0.56 +0.08 +0.28 -0.18 +0.12 -0.15 +0.02		-0.25 -6.13 -0.19 -0.47 -0.19 -1.08 -0.10 +0.02 -1.07 +0.50 -0.44 -0.27 +0.11 +0.17 +0.55 -0.31 -0.24
Source: Yahoo! Finance

Click here to view last week's edition of D-brief.
http://www.idfa.org/dbrief/archive.cfm

ABOUT D-BRIEF

D-brief is written by Dairy Field magazine, a Stagnito Communications Inc. publication, www.dairyfield.com. It is provided for the benefit of the industry by the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), www.idfa.org.

D-brief is sponsored by Polytainers, Curwood and TIC Gums. Polytainers is a leader in the design, production and printing of thinwall rigid plastic containers for the dairy and food industries. Learn more about this sponsor at www.polytainersinc.com. Curwood develops and manufactures high-performance, high-barrier, polymer-based packaging materials. For more information about Curwood products, visit www.curwood.com. TIC Gums is America's oldest supplier of hydrocolloids to food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic and industrial companies worldwide. To learn more about this sponsor, visit www.ticgums.com.

For editorial content submissions, contact Cathy Sivak, D-brief editor, at editor@dbrief.org.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to this e-newsletter, send your request -- along with your full name, title, company, phone and email address -- to subscribe@dbrief.org.