ConAgra was founded by Alva Kinney and Frank Little in 1919, which concentrated four-grain factories at the Nebraska Complex (NCM) and was headquartered in Grand Island, Nebraska.
But soon, to accommodate his growing business, Kinney added a mill in Omaha in 1922. The company moved to Omaha in the same year.
The company ran at a profit until 1936, when Kinney retired. In 1940, the company began producing flour at its own mill, and in 1942 ventured into the livestock feed business. That year president R.S. Dickinson opened the company’ first out-of-state facility in Alabama with a flour mill and animal feed plant.
At that time, the company called Nebraska Consolidated Mills and it was renamed as ConAgra in 1971.
The 1970s brought the company to the brink of ruin as it lost money expanding into the fertilizer, catfish, and pet product industries and as commodity speculation wiped out ConAgra’ margins on raw foods. In 1974, C. Michael “Mike” Harper, an experienced food industry executive, took over the firm and brought it back from the brink of bankruptcy.
In 1980, it purchased more than 100 prepared food brands and it starts targeting the market of the frozen food industry and the packaged meat industry, and the company has started its buying frenzy between these 20 years.
In 2016, they announced the headquarters of ConAgra Foods be relocation to Chicago and its name changed to ConAgra Brands.
The company’s numerous consumer brands include Hunt’s tomato products, Healthy Choice, Banquet, Armour, Bumble Bee, Louis Kemp, La Choy, Wesson, Country Pride, Blue Bonnet, Parkay, Marie Calender’s, Cook’s, Swift Premium, Butterball, Slim Jim, Chef Boyardee, Orville Redenbacher’s, PAM Cooking Spray, Van Camp’s, Peter Pan, and Swiss Miss.
ConAgra Brands
