BORDEN, INC.

The company was founded by Gail Borden Jr., an amateur inventor, who was born in 1801 in Norwich, New York. On a trip back from London in 1851 he saw several children on board ship die after drinking contaminated milk. Because no one yet knew how to keep milk fresh, spoiled and even poisonous milk was not uncommon. Borden knew that the Shakers (members of a religious sect) used vacuum pans to preserve fruit, and he began experimenting with a similar apparatus in search of a way to preserve milk.

After much tinkering, he discovered he could prevent milk from souring by evaporating it over a slow heat in a vacuum. Believing that it resisted spoilage because its water content had been removed, he called his revolutionary product "condensed milk." As French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895) later demonstrated, however, it was the heat Borden used in his evaporation process that kept the milk from spoiling because it killed the bacteria in fresh milk.

After receiving a patent from the U.S. Patent Office on August 19, 1856, Borden started a small processing operation near a dairy farm in Wolcottville, Connecticut, and opened a sales office in New York City. Consumers, however, took little notice of canned milk. Undaunted by sluggish sales, he resumed production in 1857 in Burrville, Connecticut, under the name Gail Borden, Jr., and Company.

The second enterprise also struggled financially until Borden met Jeremiah Milbank, a wholesale grocer, banker, and railroad financier. With Milbank's funding they formed a partnership in 1858 known as the New York Condensed Milk Company. Another stroke of fortune came when Borden decided to advertise in an issue of Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, which coincidentally contained an article condemning the unsanitary conditions at city dairies and the practice by many unscrupulous dairymen of adding chalk and eggs to enhance their "swill milk," as it was called. Soon after the magazine appeared, the New York Condensed Milk Company was delivering condensed milk throughout lower Manhattan and in Jersey City, New Jersey.

In 1861 the U.S. government ordered 500 pounds of condensed milk for troops fighting in the American Civil War (1861–1865). As the conflict grew, government orders increased, until Borden had to license other manufacturers to keep up with demand. After the war, the New York Condensed Milk Company had a ready-made customer base among both Union and Confederate veterans. To distinguish this product from its new competitors, Borden adopted the American bald eagle as his trademark.

Gail Borden Jr. died in 1874, leaving the management of the thriving company to his sons, John Gail and Henry Lee, who presided from 1874 to 1884 and 1884 to 1902, respectively. In 1875 the company diversified by offering delivery of fluid milk in New York and New Jersey. Ten years later, it pioneered the use of easily decontaminated glass bottles for milk distribution. In 1892 Borden's fluid-milk business was expanded to Chicago and the Chicago branch also manufactured evaporated milk.

Seven years later, Henry Lee Borden opened the first foreign branch, in Ontario, Canada, bringing to 18 the number of branch facilities. In 1899, as fresh and condensed milk sales generated profits of $2 million, the company was incorporated as the Borden Condensed Milk Company.

Management of the company passed outside the Borden family for the first time in 1919 when the company changed its name to the Borden Company. During a late 1920s, Borden bought more than 200 companies around the country and became the nation's largest distributor of fluid milk. In the process, it also entered five new fields: ice cream, cheese, powdered milk, mincemeat, and adhesives.

The move into adhesives was particularly important as it formed the basis for the Borden chemical business which developed rapidly from the 1930s through the 1950s. The company expanded into formaldehyde, printing inks, fertilizers, and polyvinyl chloride. By the 1960s a key Borden product was the brand name adhesive, Elmer's Glue-All. Meantime, Borden expanded through the acquisition of several brand-name food manufacturers in the late 1950s and 1960s, including Wyler's bouillon and Wise potato chips.

After a period of slow growth in the 1970s and a major restructuring in the early 1980s, Borden once again stepped up its acquisitions activities in the later 1980s. From 1986 through 1991 the company spent __BODY__.9 billion to purchase 91 companies, with an emphasis on pasta and snack foods. The 1987 purchase of the Prince Company made Borden the undisputed leader in U.S. pasta sales. Its nine pasta companies accounted for nearly one-third of the U.S. pasta market.

But Borden was a troubled company by the early 1990s, and huge losses posted in 1992 and 1993 led to a takeover by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR) in 1995. Under KKR, Borden was dramatically restructured, with the most notable development being the 1997 divestment of the Borden dairy business, severing the link to the company's condensed milk roots. Borden, Inc. of the late 1990s was a diversified producer of pasta, pasta sauces, snacks, bouillon and dry soup, consumer adhesives (including the Elmer's and Krazy Glue brands), and industrial resins, coatings, and adhesives.

BORDEN, INC.

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