H. J. Heinz Company Reaffirms Non-Partisan Status; Attests Flagship Ketchup is All-American
Pittsburgh, PA, July 14, 2004 - In light of misleading reports, H.J. Heinz Company (NYSE:HNZ) reiterated today that neither Teresa Heinz Kerry, Senator John Kerry nor any of the Heinz trusts or endowments, either individually or collectively, holds a significant percentage of H.J. Heinz Company shares. Heinz also attests that Heinz® Tomato Ketchup sold in the United States is all-American - made at U.S. facilities in Fremont, Ohio; Muscatine, Iowa; and Stockton, California. (CLICK HERE to see video on the making of America's Favorite Ketchup™.) There is only one exception: an extremely small number of specialty Ketchup packages are filled at its Heinz Canada factory in Leamington, Ontario, north of Detroit (about 35 miles from the border).
"Heinz Ketchup is a non-partisan condiment that simply stands for great taste. It's enjoyed by Republicans, Democrats and Independents," said Debbie Foster, vice president of corporate communications for H.J. Heinz Company. "Heinz has been the favorite of Americans across the political spectrum for 135 years, and we have no intention of engaging in a political food fight now."
H.J. Heinz Company, in accordance with its corporate governance policies, is a non-partisan organization. Neither Teresa Heinz Kerry, Senator John Kerry nor any member of their family is involved in the management or board of the H.J. Heinz Company, the Heinz® Ketchup business or any of the company's other brands or products. Furthermore, there is no connection between any philanthropic programs of H.J. Heinz Company and its Foundation and the Heinz family interests (including the Howard Heinz Endowment, the Vira Heinz Endowment, and the Heinz Family Philanthropies). In 1995 the Heinz Endowments and family trusts sold a large percentage of Heinz shares in a secondary share offering to diversify their holdings. As a result, their current holdings are under 4 percent.
With respect to serving customers worldwide, H.J. Heinz Company maintains a number of overseas facilities that provide products for consumers in those markets. This allows the company to pack the freshest ingredients, tailor its recipes to local tastes and deliver the final products in a timely and efficient manner. Currently, 60% of company sales are outside of the United States.
As befits a global consumer products company with thousands of employees in the United States and around the world, the Heinz Company is non-partisan and politically independent. The Heinz Company PAC, which is funded by voluntary employee donations, has a policy of maintaining good relations with both major political parties, particularly focusing on those candidates whose district or state contains a Heinz facility. Over the past seven years, the Heinz Company PAC has contributed $96,000 to Republican candidates and $54,000 to Democratic candidates, largely reflecting the party affiliation of the candidates representing the states where we have facilities.
The practice of the Heinz Company PAC in the U.S. Presidential election is to support the nominated candidate from both major parties. Accordingly, the PAC donated $5,000 to the Bush campaign and, because the Kerry campaign does not accept PAC contributions, is donating $5,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
Heinz management and employees represent a variety of political perspectives and have personally donated to different causes and candidates on an individual basis. Simply put, the Heinz Company makes quality nutritious foods and is not politically affiliated.
H. J. Heinz Company Confirms Its Widely Held Public Ownership And Non-Partisan Status
Pittsburgh, PA, March 22, 2004 - In light of some misleading speculation, the H. J. Heinz Company would like to make clear that neither Mrs. Teresa Heinz Kerry, Senator John Kerry nor any member of their family is involved in the management or board of the H. J. Heinz Company (NYSE:HNZ). They have no involvement in the Heinz® Ketchup business or any of the company's other brands or products.
The H. J. Heinz Company, in accordance with its corporate governance policies, is a non-partisan organization.
Neither Mrs. Heinz Kerry nor Senator Kerry nor any of the Heinz trusts or endowments - either individually or collectively - holds a significant percentage of shares of the H. J. Heinz Company. In 1995 the Heinz Endowments and family trusts sold a large percentage of Heinz shares in a secondary share offering to diversify their holdings. As a result, their current holdings are under 4 percent.
There is no connection between any philanthropic programs of the H. J. Heinz Company and its Foundation and the Heinz family interests (including the Howard Heinz Endowment, the Vira Heinz Endowment, and the Heinz Family Philanthropies).
Currently, 60% of the sales of the H. J. Heinz Company are outside the United States and to accommodate those customers by providing facilities closer to those markets, the company maintains a number of overseas facilities that provide products for consumers in those markets. This allows Heinz to pack the freshest ingredients, tailor its recipes to local tastes and deliver the final products in a timely and efficient manner. In the United States, Heinz makes its flagship ketchup in factories in Fremont, Ohio; Muscatine, Iowa; and Stockton, California.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
H. J. Heinz Company was founded in 1869 by Henry John Heinz, a native of the Pittsburgh area. For 135 years, the Heinz Company has stood for pure foods and great taste. It remains headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Today, its Chairman, President and CEO is William R. Johnson.
The last Heinz family member to be involved in management with the company was H. J. "Jack" Heinz II, who served as the company's chairman until his death in 1987. Since that time, no Heinz family member has been employed by the company and none has served on its board of directors.
The late Senator H. John Heinz III (Pennsylvania - Republican) did work briefly in the 1960s in the company's marketing department before embarking upon his career in politics. He was tragically killed in a helicopter accident in 1991.
It has long been the Heinz Company's policy to refrain from commenting on presidential campaigns. The company does not communicate consumer comments to any candidates.
H. J. Heinz Company has not produced any buttons, pins, banners or other items carrying political statements. The Company does not endorse or support utilizing its packaging or trademarks in this manner. Such use of Heinz's highly valued trademarks is not authorized. The Company, as always, will defend its valuable trademarks. http://www.heinz.com/jsp/nonpartisan.jsp
Amazing how unattributed e-mails can used be put a political spin onto something that isn't factually correct. Oh well, it is just cyberspace...yeah, exporting jobs, sure...somebody doesn't understand the food business, or history...
The Story of Heinz 57 Varieties
Cream of Tomato Soup, Baked Beans, Vegetable Salad, Chocolate Sponge Pudding, all these modern tinned delicacies seem a far cry from the roaring, lawless Wild West of a century ago.
And yet it was there, in a perilous frontier town where "Cowboys and Indians" was no child's game but a deadly reality, and that the now famous firm of Heinz was founded.
Lorenze Heinze, who was born in 1811, emigrated from his native Bavaria when he was 29 years old and settled in Pittsburg in the United States. Then he married and in 1844 his first child, Henry John, was born.
Five years later the family moved to Sharpsburg where Lorenz became a brick maker.
It was a hard life - and one of continual hard work - into which young Henry was born. Transport was of the most primitive kind and the result that every community out West had to be self-supporting as far as vegetables and farm produce were concerned. So it was that by the time young Henry was 8 years old he had to work in his father's brickyard and also work in the garden as well as attend school.
As time went on it seemed quite obvious to everyone that Henry was destined to follow in his father's footsteps and become a brick maker. He undoubtedly would have done had not his life been completely changed by a common garden plant ---- horse-radish.
The Heinz family vegetable plot was very similar to that of all their neighbours in that it had to provide the family with vegetables all the year round. The only difference was perhaps that their clump of horse-radish was bigger and better than most, a thing not really to be wondered at seeing that it was a native of Lorenz's homeland where it would have appeared regularly with meals.
As the years passed the clump of horse-radish grew so big that the combined appetites of the Heinz family, now grown to nine, could no longer cope with it.
The neighbours were therefore persuaded to buy it, and it was Henry who had to take it around, first by hand, then by wheel-barrow, then by handcart and finally by horse and cart.
Later came the idea that perhaps the neighbours would pay a little more for it if it were delivered ready ground and so this was done.
By the time Henry was 16 he had become his father's book-keeper and business assistant and had also ventured into the realms of preserving by putting ground horse-radish into bottles.
In 1869 he took a partner and founded the firm of Heinz and Noble, a company which to outsiders, must have appeared somewhat of an oddity, dealing as it did with two such dissimilar products as bricks and horse-radish.
Nevertheless, under Henry's astute guidance, it flourished and two years later he built a new house for the family and turned the old house into a food processing factory where bottled horse-radish and bottled pickles, a new line, were made.
At the same time another partner was taken into the firm and the profitable and expanding little firm which was building itself such a big reputation for clean pure food began rapidly forging ahead to--
---bankruptcy.
This occurred after the depression which followed the Civil War, the Panic of 1873,which caused wholesale bankruptcies, bread lines, soup kitchens and suicides.
For a time the firm weathered the storm, but in 1875 it was listed as one of the 5,000 "failed companies".
To Henry this was not an irreparable disaster, it was merely a spur to his ambition and so, two months later, he started again. He borrowed 3,000 dollars from his brother John and his cousin Frederick and a new firm, F & J.Heinz was launched, with Henry as its manager and guiding genius.
The new firm succeeded from the start and very soon new products, tomato ketchup, pepper sauce, vinegar, apple butter, fruit jellies and mince meat, were being marketed.
As a result of this increased production Henry was able to pay off all his creditors by 1884.
Two years later he visited Europe and, while in London, persuaded the famous firm of Fortnum & Mason to sell his goods.
This was a major triumph for Henry, for the English market for such goods was notoriously conservative, a triumph that seemed to herald the firm's future success for, from that moment it seemed that nothing could go wrong.
In 1888 Henry bought out his brother's interests, re-named the firm H.J. Heinz & Company and then bought a new site and started planning to build a new factory.
It was only a few years later that he originated the famous "57 Varieties" slogan.
In 1919, by which time his food factory was one of the largest in America, Henry died to be succeeded by his son, Howard.
Under Howard, expansion after expansion took place, branches were opened all over the world, and a factory was built in England, at Harlesden, which began production in 1925.
At first only bottled goods were produced there, pickles, sauces and condiments, but later, in 1928, it was decided to produce a canned food that had long been a favourite in the United States, Baked Beans in Tomato Sauce.
The new introduction soon proved so successful that it was followed by Spaghetti and a variety of soups.
During the Second World War the Heinz factory was, naturally, chiefly concerned with food production for the armed forces and it was during this period that Howard died, his place then being taken by his son, Henry J.Heinz II.
After the war the demand for Heinz products so increased that in 1946 a new factory was leased at Standish, a few miles from Wigan, which, as well as making the usual range of Heinz products, also started producing Strained Foods for babies.
Even with this additional factory, however, the demand still exceed production and so a new site was acquired nearby at Kitt Green.
Work began on the new £7,000.000 project in 1955 and it was opened four years later.
This new building, the largest food factory in the Commonwealth, embodied all that was most up-to-date both in construction and equipment.
H. J. Heinz Company today is an enterprise involving more than 45,800 people in over 200 major locations worldwide, with leading brands on six continents. Heinz brand names - such as Ore-Ida, Smart Ones, Bagel Bites, Wattie's, San Marco, 9-Lives, Kibbles 'n Bits, Pounce, Farley's, Plasmon, Bio Dieterba, StarKist, John West, Petit Navire, Greenseas, Classico, Wyler's, UFC, Orlando, ABC, Honig, Hak, DeRuijter, Olivine and Pudliski - appear on more than 5,700 different products here and abroad. Heinz also uses the famous names Weight Watchers, Boston Market and Linda McCartney under license.
Hi Viv; "... Teresa Heinz Kerry does not "own the Heinz Corporation" — she has no involvement whatsoever with the management or operations of the H.J. Heinz Company, nor does she own anything close to a controlling interest of the company's stock. According to Heinz itself, the Heinz family trust which Mrs. Kerry inherited sold most of its shares of Heinz stock back in 1995 and currently holds less than a 4% interest in the company:
Neither Mrs. Heinz Kerry nor Senator Kerry nor any of the Heinz trusts or endowments — either individually or collectively — holds a significant percentage of shares of the H.J. Heinz Company. In 1995 the Heinz Endowments and family trusts sold a large percentage of Heinz shares in a secondary share offering to diversify their holdings. As a result, their current holdings are under 4 percent.
There is no connection between any philanthropic programs of the H.J. Heinz Company and its Foundation and the Heinz family interests (including the Howard Heinz Endowment, the Vira Heinz Endowment, and the Heinz Family Philanthropies). (A 4% stake in a company as large as Heinz still represents a considerable amount of money, but it isn't nearly large enough a share to give the holder any significant control or influence over the company's business decisions.)
Moreover, the Heinz Company's operations are not an example of the type of outsourcing that is currently a hot political issue (i.e., sending out work to offshore companies to provide services which a company might otherwise have employed its own staff to perform). Heinz is a U.S.-based global business which sells its products in dozens of other countries, and like other food companies it has to localize some of its production at factories located in its foreign market areas. (It makes little sense from either an economic or a freshness standpoint to be shipping fruits and vegetables and/or finished food products halfway around the world rather than producing them locally.) One wouldn't expect, for example, every can and bottle of Coca-Cola sold anywhere in the world — whether it be Australia, China, or Portugal — to be produced by U.S. bottlers.)
As the H.J. Heinz Company notes, well over half its sales come from foreign markets, and it therefore operates overseas facilities to serve those markets:
Currently, 60% of the sales of the H.J. Heinz Company are outside the United States and to accommodate those customers by providing facilities closer to those markets, the company maintains a number of overseas facilities that provide products for consumers in those markets. This allows Heinz to pack the freshest ingredients, tailor its recipes to local tastes and deliver the finished products in a timely and efficient manner. In the United States, Heinz makes its flagship ketchup in factories in Fremont, Ohio; Muscatine, Iowa; and Stockton, California.
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