Seaboard Corporation

views updated May 23 2018

Seaboard Corporation

9000 West 67th Street
Shawnee Mission, Kansas 66202
U.S.A.
Telephone: (913) 676-8800
Toll Free: (800) 262-7907
Fax: (913) 676-8872
Web site: http://www.seaboardcorp.com

Public Subsidiary of Seaboard Flour LLC
Incorporated: 1928 as Rodney Milling
Employees: 10,357
Sales: $2.69 billion (2005)
Stock Exchanges: American
Ticker Symbol: SEB
NAIC: 311611 Animal (Except Poultry) Slaughtering; 483111 Deep Sea Freight Transportation; 112210 Hog and Pig Farming; 523130 Commodity Contracts Dealing; 111930 Sugar Cane Farming; 115114 Post Harvest Crop Activities (Except for Cotton Ginning)

Seaboard Corporation operates three core businesses: pork production and processing, ocean transportation, and grain processing and trading. Subsidiaries also engage in sugar and citrus fruit production and processing, as well as electric power generation. The company ranked as a leading poultry producer until January 2000 when the company sold the operation to ConAgra for $375 million. Seaboard is publicly traded, but about 71 percent of its shares are held by Seaboard Flour LLC, which is owned by heirs of founder Otto Bresky.

ORIGINS

Seaboard traces its roots to the early part of the 20th century. Company founder Otto Bresky started out in 1916 as a flour broker, buying his own mill in Atchison, Kansas, two years later. In 1919 he purchased the Imperial Brewing Company of Kansas City and converted it to a milling operation. Bresky's company became known as Rodney Milling in 1928 when he purchased a company of that name, which he then incorporated under. Gradual growth continued over the next three decades, with purchases of Ismert-Hinke Milling in 1938 and Consolidated Flour Mills in 1950.

In 1959 Rodney Milling merged with Hathaway Industries, Inc., and became a publicly traded company. The newly united firms took the name of Seaboard Allied Milling Corporation. Seaboard soon began expanding, following a strategy of building flour mills near populous areas in the East and Southeast. The first of these was completed in 1962 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with another built in 1966 in Jacksonville, Florida. Also in 1966, the company initiated its first overseas venture, investing in a flour mill in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in conjunction with Continental Grain Company. Shortly after this, more moves were made abroad, with mills built in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1968, and Georgetown, Guyana, a year later.

Back in the United States, Seaboard built a mill in Culpepper, Virginia, in 1970 and enlarged it just two years later. The year 1973 saw founder and patriarch Otto Bresky step down from a leadership role after more than half a century with the company. His son, Seaboard President Harry Bresky, took the reins of the still largely family-owned concern and kept it on its course of expansion. The 1970s saw more mills built in New York, Louisiana, Liberia, and Nigeria, and the expansion of businesses in Ecuador and Liberia. The company also purchased a mill in Tennessee and an Ecuadorian animal feed company, and opened another feed plant in Nigeria. Seaboard capped the decade with construction of a new corporate headquarters in Merriam, Kansas.

In the face of increasing competition, the company made a dramatic strategic shift in early 1982 when it sold its American flour mills to Cargill, Inc., for $40 million. Its name was also shortened during the year, to Seaboard Corporation. The company was preparing to move in new directions, and soon founded a subsidiary, Seaboard Marine, Ltd., to ship goods between the United States and Central and South America. Two baking companies in Puerto Rico were also purchased at this time.

MOVING INTO POULTRY

At the beginning of 1984 Seaboard entered the poultry business with the purchase of Central Soya's poultry division, which consisted of three facilities located in the southern United States. The processing plants, in Athens and Canton, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, had a combined capacity of 400 million pounds of broiler chicken per year. A year later Seaboard added more by acquiring Elberton Poultry of Georgia. The company continued to grow overseas during the mid-1980s as well, building a new polypropylene bag factory in Nigeria and a shrimp farm in Honduras.

Seaboard also was taking advantage of the capacity of its Marine division by shipping produce from Central and South America to the United States. To expand this operation, the company purchased a Miami-based produce distributor and several farming operations in Central America.

During the latter half of the 1980s the company expanded several of its poultry processing facilities and constructed a new plant in Mayfield, Kentucky. Seaboard also moved into other areas at this time, forming a joint venture to raise Atlantic salmon near Maine and starting a Bermuda-based subsidiary to run a power-generating barge near the Dominican Republic. In 1990 the company purchased a pork and lamb processing facility owned by Cornbelt Meat, Inc. The 650,000-square-foot Albert Lea, Minnesota, plant utilized a workforce of more than 750. Seaboard received financial assistance from the city to reopen the plant, and union workers also accepted lower wages in order to return to their jobs.

FOCUSING ON PORK

As it had done with poultry, Seaboard quickly began to invest in the business of processing pork. The company built a feed mill and pig feeding operation in Colorado in 1991, and the following year broke ground on a pork processing facility in Oklahoma. Seaboard would also soon build a feed mill and facilities for production of some two million hogs per year in that state. As had been the case in Minnesota, the company received numerous financial incentives to locate its operations there. Overseas, the company also bought additional flour mills in Puerto Rico and Zaire in 1992.

In 1994 Seaboard announced the closing of its Minnesota pork plant, which it later would sell to Farmland Foods. The company also settled a four-year-old shareholder lawsuit which charged that majority stockholder Seaboard Flour had profited unfairly from certain business dealings with Seaboard Corporation. The settlement stipulated that the Bresky family–owned company pay Seaboard $10.8 million, plus $2 million in legal fees.

COMPANY PERSPECTIVES

Today, Seaboard works through a network of integrated service oriented companies. At the heart of our structure is a commitment to the customer and the need to continually improve upon our products and services. Our uniqueness is defined by our ability to act quickly and decisively through empowerment of the operating divisions and a corporate credo of honesty and integrity. We consider our reputation to be of utmost importance and a true indicator of our long term value to customers, employees, shareholders and the community at large.

After months of delays, Seaboard's new state-of-the-art pork processing facility in Guymon, Oklahoma, was opened on January 6, 1996. The $110 million plant was capable of processing four million hogs annually when it was in full operation. At least 1,160 workers would be used, spread over two shifts. The plant was so large that it required expansion of hog production capacity throughout the region. Hogs were to be grown in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas, as well as in Oklahoma. Half were produced by Seaboard, with a quarter from farms under contract to the company and the rest from outside suppliers. The company also secured a $9.5 million tax-exempt loan from the state of Kansas to build 26 hog-waste lagoons. The loan, which had been obtained through a loophole in a law that banned state assistance of corporate hog farming, caused an uproar among state legislators.

Seaboard was doing well with pork, and the following year announced plans to set up a second large facility in Kansas, one that could also process four million hogs per year. Unlike many of its competitors, Seaboard sold a significant amount of pork abroad, more than triple the industry average of 7 percent. The company was the leading supplier to Japan, which purchased almost half of all U.S. pork exports.

CONTINUING FOREIGN EXPANSION

Seaboard continued to seek other opportunities overseas, and purchased an interest in Ingenio y Refineria San Martin del Tabacal S.A. of Argentina, a grower and processor of sugar cane and a grower of citrus fruit. Investments were also made in a flour, cookie, and pasta company in Mozambique and flour mills in Haiti, Lesotho, and Angola. Other international moves in the mid- and late 1990s included the acquisition of controlling interest in Bulgaria's leading wine producer, which had formerly been nationalized, and the purchase of a Zambian milling company. Seaboard also sold its flour milling and baking businesses in Puerto Rico and, in the United States, bought a stake in a seafood processing venture in Maine in partnership with Continental Grain Co.

In November 1998 the notoriously publicity-shy Seaboard was the subject of a lengthy article in Time magazine that claimed the company had received $150 million in "corporate welfare" during the 1990s. Time alleged that Seaboard actively sought the biggest handouts, and had abandoned the Albert Lea, Minnesota, pork plant, which devastated that city financially, when it found a sweeter offer in Oklahoma. Rick Hoffman, CEO of the company's Seaboard Farms subsidiary, responded by telling the Associated Press that, "There were no programs that Seaboard solicited by the state that did not already exist for other new businesses." He also declared that much of the money Time claimed was earmarked for Seaboard did not benefit the company.

Seaboard and other large animal processors were also being criticized by organizations such as the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club for causing pollution, making the areas surrounding their facilities unpleasant to inhabit, and reducing the size of important wetlands in the plains states. The company's foes cited an $88,000 fine Seaboard had paid to Oklahoma for improper disposal of hog carcasses as evidence of its wrongdoing.

In 1999 Seaboard announced it was spending $144.5 million to buy 50 percent of Dominican Republic power-generating company Haina, which owned five electrical plants. Annual revenues topped $1.25 billion, up from $715 million just four years earlier. Income from pork accounted for nearly half that amount, with marine operations responsible for another quarter.

KEY DATES

1918:: Flour broker Otto Bresky purchases a mill in Atchison, Kansas.
1928:: Bresky purchases Rodney Milling and incorporates his business under that name.
1938:: Ismert-Hinke Milling is acquired.
1950:: Company purchases Consolidated Flour Mills.
1959:: Company merges with Hathaway Industries, Inc.; name changes to Seaboard Allied Milling.
1960s-1970s:: Company builds flour mills in eastern and southeastern United States.
1966:: First foreign investment is made in Ecuadorian flour mill.
1982:: Company sells U.S. milling operations to Cargill, Inc.; name is shortened to Seaboard Corporation.
1984:: Seaboard purchases Central Soya's poultry division.
1990:: Seaboard buys pork processing facility from Cornbelt Meats, Inc.
1996:: New pork processing operation opens in Oklahoma.
2000:: Company sells poultry interests to ConAgra, Inc.
2005:: Company posts second straight year of record profits.

In January 2000 the company made its biggest divestment ever, selling its poultry operations to ConAgra, Inc., for $375 million in cash and debt assumption. Other activity for the year included the purchase of another hog processing company and investment in a flour and feed milling business in Kenya. In Texas, Seaboard made a deal to acquire the Jacintoport Marine Terminal of Houston. The company would own the buildings on the site and lease the land from the city's port authority. Seaboard Marine already used the facility, which featured a high-speed bagged-cargo loading system. Additionally, Seaboard gained noncontrolling interest in one of Bulgaria's largest wine producers and exporters when its majority owned winery merged with Domain Boyar. In the Dominican Republic, a second barge-mounted power plant began operation.

At the start of the new century, Seaboard Corporation was going strong, strengthening its hog production operations and continuing to diversify overseas by expanding its milling, power generating, and food production businesses. The company ranked among the top five U.S. pork producers.

FINE-TUNING AND RISING PROFITS: 2001–06

The beginning of 2001 was marked by U.S. pork industry concerns over the country's capacity to slaughter all the hogs being produced in the coming years. An excess of hogs could lead to depressed prices. Seaboard was the only U.S. operation planning to add physical plant capacity, one expected to begin operation in late 2002. Other U.S. packers depended on work schedule and operation changes to boost capacity. Labor shortages were a slaughter industry concern. Seaboard tried and failed to gain support to establish a plant in two other midwestern towns before settling on Elwood, Kansas, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In March, Seaboard Farms dropped plans for its new pork processing plants, citing economic reasons, the St. Joseph News-Press (Missouri) reported. Seaboard's Guymon, Oklahoma, plant slaughtered four million hogs per year, and the Elwood plant would have doubled the company's total capacity. Twenty percent of its pork product exports were earmarked for Asia, a region experiencing an economic downturn.

During 2001, Seaboard recorded an $18 million pretax gain when it sold its interest in ContiSea LLC to Fjord Seafood ASA. When ContiSea merged with Fjord in 2000, both Conti Group and Seaboard received 18 percent of Fjord, according to Feedstuffs. Maine-based ContiSea, an integrated producer of fish and seafood products, was the joint venture between Conti Group Companies and Seaboard.

Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as part of a new policy, refrained from taking action against Seaboard for improper entries and subsequent cover-up by a former controller. SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt, appointed by President George W. Bush, enacted a policy of giving corporations credit for reporting their misdeeds, the Los Angeles Times reported in October 2001.

Seaboard's net earnings were hit by a $7.8 million charge in 2001 related to the devaluation of Argentina's peso. For the year, net earnings were off 46 percent to $53.3 million down from $98.9 million in 2000, which included a $90 million gain from the sale of the poultry operation. Fiscal 2001 sales climbed to $1.8 billion up from $1.5 billion the previous year.

Seaboard Flour's ownership in Seaboard Corporation dropped from approximately 75 percent to around 71 percent of outstanding common stock, after a stock repurchase during the latter half of 2002. In other action, the corporation acquired additional interest in Fjord Seafood, becoming the largest shareholder. The next year, Seaboard sold its equity interest in that operation and its shrimp farming and processing assets in Honduras.

During 2004, Seaboard gained controlling interest in a Mozambique grain-milling operation. Domestically, the company agreed to market all pork products produced by Triumph Foods LLC's St. Joseph pork processing plant when it began operation, in 2006.

Seaboard foreign operations, which had been under the scrutiny of activists, were pinpointed during a midsummer protest in 2004. The Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Massachusetts) reported Seaboard's Brookline offices were to be a stop-off point of the Worcester Global Action Network on its way to Boston and the Democratic National Convention. The group maintained both the Democratic and Republican parties colluded with multinational corporations exploiting workers abroad.

In 2005, the Environmental Protection Agency presented large operation farms with a deal designed to speed up completion of new air standards. The agreement included air monitoring and fines for violations of environmental laws. The National Pork Producers Council supported the concept while environmentalists called it a "backroom deal," the Tulsa World reported. Seaboard was engaged in an active case regarding the Clean Air Act at the time.

In a move to focus more tightly on its core business, Seaboard agreed to sell some of its third-party commodity trading operations, the Journal of Commerce Online reported in May 2005. The activity produced 23 percent of the corporation's total 2004 revenue.

Seaboard generated a second straight year of record profits for 2005. Combined with 2004, the two years surpassed the total earnings of the previous 13 years, according to the company's annual report. All core areas produced strong results, including the marine business, which faced the additional challenges of Hurricanes Katrina and Wilma. During the year, the pork group, which was adding more value-added products to its mix, changed its name to Seaboard Foods from Seaboard Farms. In line with the new direction, the acquisition of Daily's during the year boosted its presence in food service and institutional markets.

Late in 2006, Forbes took note of Seaboard's profitable operation and tight-lipped operation. "Chief Executive Steven Bresky, who recently took over from his father H. Harry Bresky doesn't get written up on the businesses pages because he is too busy to talk to journalists. Investor relations consists of politely telling anybody who inquires to read the 10-K and buzz off."

Frank Uhle

Updated, Kathleen Peippo

PRINCIPAL SUBSIDIARIES

Agencia Maritima del Istmo, S.A. (Costa Rica); Agencias Generales Conaven, C.A. (Venezuela); Chestnut Hill Farms Honduras, S. de R.L. de C.V. (Honduras); Ingenio y Refineria San Martin del Tabacal SRL (Argentina); National Milling Company of Guyana, Inc. (Guyana); National Milling Corporation Limited (Zambia); Representaciones Maritimas y Aereas, S.A. (Guatemala); Sea Cargo, S.A. (Panama); Seaboard de Colombia, S.A. (Colombia); Seaboard Honduras, S. de R. L. de C.V. (Honduras); Seaboard del Peru, S.A. (Peru); Seaboard Foods LP; Seaboard Freight & Shipping Jamaica Limited (Jamaica); Seaboard Marine Bahamas, Ltd. (Bahamas); Seaboard Marine Ltd.; Minoterie du Congo, S.A. (Republic of Congo; Mobeira SARL (Mozambique); Seaboard West Africa Limited (Sierra Leone); Cayman Freight Shipping Services, Ltd. (Cayman Islands); JacintoPort International LP; Seaboard de Nicaragua, S.A. (Nicaragua); Seaboard Marine (Trinidad) Ltd. (Trinidad); Seaboard Marine of Haiti, S.E. (Haiti); SEADOM, S.A. (Dominican Republic); Seamaritima S.A. de C.V. (Mexico); Transcontinental Capital Corp. (Bermuda) Ltd. (Dominican Republic); Mount Dora Farms Inc.

PRINCIPAL COMPETITORS

APL Limited; Cargill, Incorporated; Smithfield Foods, Inc.

Seaboard Corporation

views updated May 29 2018

Seaboard Corporation

9000 West 67th St.
Shawnee Mission, Kansas 66202
U.S.A.
Telephone: (913) 676-8800
Fax: (913) 676-8872
Web site: http://www.seaboardcorp.com

Public Subsidiary of Seaboard Flour Company
Incorporated: 1928 as Rodney Milling
Employees: 9,763
Sales: $1.26 billion (1999)
Stock Exchanges: American
Ticker Symbol: SEB
NAIC : 311611 Animal (Except Poultry) Slaughtering; 11221 Hog and Pig Farming; 483111 Deep Sea Freight Transportation; 52313 Commodity Contracts Dealing; 311211 Flour Milling; 311119 Other Animal Food Manufacturing; 311812 Commercial Bakeries; 111219 Other Vegetable (Except Potato) and Melon Farming; 322223 Plastics, Foil, and Coated Paper Bag Manufacturing; 49313 Farm Product Warehousing and Storage; 221112 Fossil Fuel Electric Power Generation

Seaboard Corporation is a diversified company whose largest business consists of pork production for domestic and foreign consumption. Seaboard and its subsidiaries also sell commodities such as grains and seeds, process citrus fruit and seafood, grow sugar cane, make wine, generate electrical power, mill flour and animal feed, and ship cargo between the United States and points south. The company was a leading poultry producer until January 2000, when it sold this operation to ConAgra for $375 million. Seaboard is publicly traded, but 75 percent of its shares are held by the Seaboard Flour Company, which is owned by heirs of founder Otto Bresky.

Origins

Seaboard traces its roots to the early part of the 20th century. Company founder Otto Bresky started out in 1916 as a flour broker, buying his own mill in Atchison, Kansas, two years later. In 1919 he purchased the Imperial Brewing Company of Kansas City and converted it to a milling operation. Bresky’s company became known as Rodney Milling in 1928 when he purchased a company of that name, which he then incorporated under. Gradual growth continued over the next three decades, with purchases of Ismert-Hinke Milling in 1938 and Consoli-dated Flour Mills in 1950.

In 1959 Rodney Milling merged with Hathaway Industries, Inc. and became a publicly traded company. The newly united firms took the name of Seaboard Allied Milling Corporation. Seaboard soon began expanding, following a strategy of building flour mills near populous areas in the East and Southeast. The first of these was completed in 1962 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with another built in 1966 in Jacksonville, Florida. Also in 1966, the company initiated its first overseas venture, investing in a flour mill in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in conjunction with Continental Grain Company. Shortly after this more moves were made abroad, with mills built in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in 1968 and Georgetown, Guyana, a year later.

In the face of increasing competition, the company made a dramatic strategic shift in early 1982 when it sold its American flour mills to Cargill, Inc. for $40 million. Its name was also shortened during the year, to Seaboard Corporation. The company was now preparing to move in new directions, and soon founded a subsidiary, Seaboard Marine, Ltd., to ship goods between the United States and Central and South America. Two baking companies in Puerto Rico were also purchased at this time.

Moving into Poultry

At the beginning of 1984 Seaboard entered the poultry business with the purchase of Central Soya’s poultry division, which consisted of three facilities located in the southern United States. The processing plants, in Athens and Canton, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, had a combined capacity of 400 million pounds of broiler chicken per year. A year later Seaboard added more by acquiring Elberton Poultry of Georgia. The company continued to grow overseas during the mid-1980s as well, building a new polypropylene bag factory in Nigeria and a shrimp farm in Honduras.

During the latter half of the 1980s the company expanded several of its poultry processing facilities and constructed a new plant in May field, Kentucky. Seaboard also moved into other areas at this time, forming a joint venture to raise Atlantic salmon near Maine and starting a Bermuda-based subsidiary to run a power-generating barge near the Dominican Republic. In 1990 the company purchased a recently closed pork and lamb processing facility owned by Cornbelt Meat, Inc. The 650,000-square-foot Albert Lea, Minnesota plant utilized a workforce of more than 750. Seaboard received financial assistance from the city to reopen the plant, and union workers also accepted lower wages in order to return to their jobs.

Focusing on Pork

As it had done with poultry, Seaboard quickly began to invest in the business of processing pork. The company built a feed milling and pig feeding operation in Colorado in 1991, and the following year broke ground on a pork processing facility in Oklahoma. Seaboard would also soon build a feed mill and facilities for production of some two million hogs per year in that state. As had been the case in Minnesota, the company received numerous financial incentives to locate its operations there. Overseas, the company also bought additional flour mills in Puerto Rico and Zaire in 1992.

In 1994 Seaboard announced the closing of its Minnesota pork plant, which it later would sell to Farmland Foods. The company also settled a four-year-old shareholder lawsuit which charged that majority stockholder Seaboard Flour had profited unfairly from certain business dealings with Seaboard Corporation. The settlement stipulated that the Bresky family-owned company pay Seaboard $10.8 million, plus $2 million in legal fees.

After months of delays, Seaboard’s new state-of-the-art pork processing facility in Guymon, Oklahoma, was opened on January 6,1996. The $110 million plant was capable of processing four million hogs annually when it was in full operation. At least 1,160 workers would be utilized, spread over two shifts. The plant was so large that it required expansion of hog production capacity throughout the region. Hogs were to be grown in Kansas, Colorado, and Texas, as well as in Oklahoma. Half were produced by Seaboard, with a quarter from farms under contract to the company and the rest from outside suppliers. The company also secured a $9.5 million tax-exempt loan from the state of Kansas to build 26 hog waste lagoons. The loan, which had been obtained through a loophole in a law that banned state assistance of corporate hog farming, caused an uproar among state legislators.

Seaboard was doing well with pork, and the following year announced plans to set up a second large facility in Kansas, one which could also process four million hogs per year. Unlike many of its competitors, Seaboard sold a significant amount of pork abroad, more than triple the industry average of seven percent. The company was the leading supplier to Japan, which purchased almost half of all U.S pork exports.

Continuing Foreign Expansion

Seaboard continued to seek other opportunities overseas, and purchased an interest in Ingenio y Refineria San Martin del Tabacal S.A. of Argentina, a grower and processor of sugar cane and a grower of citrus fruit. Investments were also made in a flour, cookie, and pasta company in Mozambique and flour mills in Haiti, Lesotho, and Angola. Other international moves in the mid- and late-1990s included the acquisition of controlling interest in Bulgaria’s leading wine producer, which had formerly been nationalized, and the purchase of a Zambian milling company. Seaboard also sold its flour milling and baking businesses in Puerto Rico and, in the United States, bought a stake in a seafood processing venture in Maine in partnership with Continental Grain Co.

In November 1998 the notoriously publicity-shy Seaboard was the subject of a lengthy article in Time magazine that claimed the company had received $150 million in “corporate welfare” during the 1990s. Time alleged that Seaboard actively sought the biggest handouts, and had abandoned the Albert Lea, Minnesota pork plant, which devastated that city financially, when it found a sweeter offer in Oklahoma. Rick Hoffman, CEO of the company’s Seaboard Farms subsidiary, responded by telling the Associated Press that, “There were no programs that Seaboard solicited by the state that did not already exist for other new businesses.” He also declared that much of the money Time claimed was earmarked for Seaboard did not in fact benefit the company.

Company Perspectives

Seaboard Corporation is a diversified and vertically inte-grated agribusiness and ocean transportation company. Our goal across all of our business lines is to provide exceptional value to our customers.

Through diversity in geographic regions and business segments, we are well positioned to take advantage of a robust U.S. economy and the dynamic changes taking place overseas.

Seaboard and other large animal processors were also being criticized by organizations such as the National Audubon Society and the Sierra Club for causing pollution, making the areas surrounding their facilities unpleasant to inhabit, and reducing the size of important wetlands in the plains states. The company’s foes cited an $88,000 fine Seaboard had paid to Oklahoma for improper disposal of hog carcasses as evidence of its wrongdoing.

In January 2000 the company made its biggest divestment ever, selling its poultry operations to ConAgra, Inc. for $375 million in cash and debt assumption. Other activity for the year included the purchase of another hog processing company and investment in a flour and feed milling business in Kenya. In Texas, Seaboard made a deal to acquire the Jacintoport Marine Terminal of Houston. The company would own the buildings on the site and lease the land from the city’s port authority. Sea-board Marine already used the facility, which featured a high speed bagged-cargo loading system.

Principal Subsidiaries

A & W Interlining Services Corp.; Agencia Maritima del Istmo, S.A. (Costa Rica); Agencias Generales Conaven, C.A. (Venezuela); Cape Fear Railways, Inc.; Chestnut Hill Farms Honduras, S.A. de C.V. (Honduras); Chestnut Hill Farms, Inc.; Consorcio Naviero de Occidente, C.A. (Venezuela); Cultivos Marines, S.A. de C.V. (Honduras); Empacadora Literal, S.A. de C.V. (Honduras); H&O Shipping Limited (Liberia); Ingenio y Refineria San Martin del Tabacal (Argentina); National Milling Company of Guyana, Ltd. (Guyana); National Milling Company Limited (Zambia); Port of Miami Cold Storage, Inc.; Representaciones Maritimas y Aereas, S.A. (Guatemala); S.B.D., LLC; Samovar International Finance, Inc. (Puerto Rico); SASCO Engineering Co./ Seaboard Sales Corporation Ltd. (Bermuda); Sea Cargo, S.A. (Panama); Seaboard de Colombia, S.A. (Colombia); Seaboard de Honduras, S.A. de C.V. (Honduras); Seaboard del Peru, S.A. (Peru); Seaboard Farms, Inc.; Seaboard Freight & Shipping Jamaica Limited (Jamaica); Seaboard Guyana, Ltd. (Bermuda); Seaboard Holdings Ltd. (British Virgin Islands); Seaboard Marine Bahamas, Ltd. (Bahamas); Seaboard Marine Ltd. (Liberia); Seaboard Marine of Florida, Inc.; Seaboard Overseas Limited (Bahamas); Seaboard Ship Management Inc.; Seaboard Shipping Services (PTY) Ltd. (South Africa); Seaboard Trading and Shipping Ltd.; Seaboard Transport Inc.; Secuador Limited (Bermuda); Shilton Limited (Cayman Islands); Transcontinental Capital Corp. (Bermuda) Ltd. (Bermuda); Vinprom Rousse AD (Bulgaria).

Principal Competitors

Alico, Inc.; Baltek Corp.; Cargill, Inc.; ConAgra, Inc.; CSX Corp.; Dole Food Company, Inc.; Farmland Industries, Inc.; Hormel Foods Corp.; IBP, Inc.; Nicor, Inc.; Premium Standard Farms, Inc.; Smithfield Foods, Inc.; Tate & Lyle PLC.

Key Dates

1918:: Flour broker Otto Bresky purchases a mill in Atchison, Kansas.
1928:: Bresky purchases Rodney Milling and incorporates his business under that name.
1938:: Ismert-Hinke Milling is acquired.
1950:: Company purchases Consolidated Flour Mills.
1959:: Company merges with Hathaway Industries, Inc.; name changes to Seaboard Allied Milling.
1960s–70s:: Company builds flour mills in eastern and southeastern United States.
1966:: First foreign investment is made in Ecuadorian flour mill.
1982:: Company sells U.S. milling operations to Cargill, Inc.; name shortened to Seaboard Corporation.
1984:: Seaboard purchases Central Soya’s poultry division.
1990:: Seaboard buys pork processing facility from Cornbelt Meats, Inc.
1996:: New pork processing operation opens in Oklahoma.
2000:: Company sells poultry interests to ConAgra, Inc.