General Mills Company

In 1856 Cadwallader Colden Washburn (1818-1882) established the Minneapolis Milling Company, which began to mill flour in 1866.

It started as ‘Washburn’s Folly’. People sneered, snickered and some even laughed right out loud as Washburn completed his first grain refinery on banks of Mississippi River.

Washburn later formed Washburn-Crosby with John Crosby, twenty years later, what became one of the nation’s leading million companies.

Minneapolis Milling Company concentrated on promoting its signature product, Gold Medal Flour.

After acquiring twenty seven other milling operations, in 1928 the Washburn Mills Company incorporated as General Mills and then introduced a cereal, Washburn’s Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flakes. Its named was shortened to Wheaties.

Cheerios was created in 1941 as ‘Cheerioats’ but renamed several years later. During the 1950s, General Mills began marketing its cereal to children, and sugar-coated wheat cereals became common.

In 1997 General Mills acquired the rights to Yoplait and in 1997 the company acquired the cereals division of Ralcorp Holdings, makers of Chex cereals.

In 2001 general Mills acquired the Pillsbury Company, which had begun as the mill across the river more than one hundred years earlier, to create one of the world’s largest food companies. General Mills believed that the merger could help it break into fast-growing food categories with new products to augment its tried and true, yet quite mature cereal product lines.

In 1989, General Mills established a partnership, called the Cereal Partners Worldwide, with Nestlé to distribute its cereals outside of North America.
General Mills Company

History of Louis Dreyfus Company

Louis Dreyfus is a French grain company is one of the largest traders in the world. It is a global processor, trader and merchandiser of various agriculture and energy commodities.

The business had been founded in the nineteenth century in the small Alsatian town of Sierentz by one Leopold Dreyfus.

At fifteen, Leopold wheeled barrows of grain from his hometown across the border into Switzerland, where it fetched a higher price.

At age seventeen Leopold Dreyfus left his farm and family and spend several years in the stream of wandering merchants involved in the European grain trade.

He then established his own grain company and took out a large loans. He arrived in Odessa in the 1860s and purchased the bulk of the grain storage bins in the city.

By the 1870s he was contracting for wheat from Russian hinterland, shipping by rail to his storage facilities in Odessa, shipping grain on his freighters and selling future and grain to buyers in Hamburg, Bremen, Berlin, Mannheim, Duisburg and Paris.

Currently Louis Dreyfus Group holds a global position in all areas of energy and agriculture including, production, processing, and merchandising.

History of Louis Dreyfus Company