Del Monte Foods

Del Monte Foods is an American food manufacturing and distribution company that was launched in 1899 when 18 California packers representing about half of the fruit canners in California formed the California Fruit Canners Association.

Seventeen years later the association incorporated under the name California Packers Association or Calpak. It began marketing a line of canned goods under the Del Monte brand (the name of a luxurious hotel on Monterey, California) in 1916.

California Packers Association remained the firm’s name until 1967, when Calpal took the name of its brand and became Del Monte Foods.

From the beginning, the company expanded its operations and packed a vast array of products, including peaches, baked beans, olives berries, squash, sweet potatoes, peppers and cranberries as well as dried fruit, jams, and jellies.

During the 1920s, the company expanded its operations into an array of other canning business including tuna and coffee.

In 1917 Calpak enlisted the culinary expert Marion Harris Neil to write an advertising cookbooklet, Good Things to Eat, feature Del Monte products. The company has regularly published cookbooklets ever since.

Del Monte established operations in Hawaii shortly after its founding. When the United States entered World War II, the company sent 50 percent of its canned fruits and vegetables to the military. After World War II, Calpak increased its sales to foreign countries and by 1965 exports topped $96 million.

In 1979, Del Monte merged with RJ Reynolds Industries. During the following two decades there were several ownership changes. In 1999 Del Monte Foods became a publicly traded Company. Del Monte fresh produce was then spun off, although it still continues to display the Del Monte label, as do independent firms in Canada, Africa, Europe and Asia.
Del Monte Foods

Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company

Hawaiian Pineapple Company was capitalized in 1901 who $16,240. It is small company but the timing and connections were impeccable.

Fresh graduate from Harvard, James Drummond Dole converted a 44 by 80—foot barn in Wahiawa into cannery and using some crude, hand operated equipment , began canning the pineapples from his homestead.

Dole’s company employees invented machines to streamline the pineapple’s canning, including a feeder and slicer to cut into uniform shapes and sizes, an ‘eradicator’ to scrape the skin clean of its flesh and juice.

In 1903, James Dole’s first batch of canned pineapples filled 1893 cases with each case contained 24 cans of pineapple: each can weight two pounds. The year after that this figure shot up to 8,810 cases.

Dole moved his pineapple cannery to Honolulu in 1907, and placed ads in US magazines to promote the fruit, undertaking one of the first nationwide consumer ad campaigns in America.

James Dole’s idea to advertise pineapple under multiple labels was so successful that between 1910 and 1911 pineapple consumption quadruple, and production increased fr0m 300,000 cases in 1911 to 600,000 in 1913 and over a million in 1918.

In 1922, Dole purchased nearly the entire island of Lanai, making it the largest pineapple in the world.

Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company was later acquired by Hawaii agriculture firm Castle & Cooke. David Murdock, a Los Angles billionaire, took over Castle & Cooke in the mid 1980 and changed the brand name back to Dole Food to capitalize in name recognition.
Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Company