The Borden Company, originally named the New York Condensed Milk Company and later the Borden Condensed Milk Company, was founded in 1857 by Gail Borden (1801-1874), who established a milk depot on Canal Street in Manhattan and a processing plant in Wollcottsville, Connecticut. At one time, Borden was the largest U.S. producer of dairy and pasta products.
Born in New York, Borden was a bit of a renaissance man by the time he reached his 40s. He had been a publisher, a cattleman, a surveyor, a civil servant, a politician and a missionary. In the mid-1840s, he began to focus on methods to keep food from spoiling.
In 1853, Borden began working on a process to condense milk as a means of preventing spoilage. Four years later, he established his first condensery in Burrville and called his nascent business the New York Condensed Milk Company, later to become the Borden Company. Borden was the first company to develop a patent for the process of condensing milk as well as the first company to use glass milk bottles.
The first product Borden tried to sell was a dehydrated meat biscuit, and his experience with it led him to patenting and marketing condensed milk, a form of milk that needed no refrigeration.
Over the years, Borden turned into Borden Inc. with a consumer products division operating under six operating groups: dairy, grocery, snacks, specialty, consumer chemicals and bakery. In 1968, Borden created Borden, Inc. International, a mirror image of the domestic operation with just about every Borden product distributed in America also appearing overseas.
Borden Incorporation
