Birds Eye

This article is about the company. For other uses, see Birdseye (disambiguation).

Birds Eye Limited

Type	Subsidiary
Industry	Food processing
Founded	1923
Founder	Clarence Birdseye
Headquarters	Parsippany, New Jersey, USA
Parent	Pinnacle Foods (USA) Iglo (Europe) Simplot Australia Pty Ltd. (Australia)
Website	www.birdseye.com

Birds Eye is an American international brand of frozen foods owned by Pinnacle Foods in North America and by Iglo Group in Europe.

History and production

The brand and its underlying business is held by different owners in various territories:

Europe

The Birds Eye brand is used extensively throughout Ireland and the UK. In other parts of Europe the Iglo brand is used.

Unilever announced in August 2006 that the business was sold to UK-based private equity group Permira.

The company's staple product, the Fish Finger, was developed in 1955 at its factory in Great Yarmouth, by a Mr H A J Scott. One of the company's main UK pea processing sites is in Gipsyville, Hull; the company formerly operated a large pea processing factory in the same area, opened 1967, closed 2007. Birdseye also operated a factory in Grimsby, founded 1929, closed 2005, with the loss of 650 jobs.

United States

As part of General Foods, it merged with Kraft Foods and Philip Morris USA to form the Altria Group. Birds Eye was sold to Dean Foods in 1993 and was independently owned by Birds Eye Foods of Rochester, New York until it was purchased by Pinnacle Foods in 2009.

In March 2010, Pinnacle announced it would be closing the Rochester headquarters and moving operations to New Jersey.

Australia and New Zealand

The Birds Eye brand is owned by Simplot Australia Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.R. Simplot Company. Simplot purchased Birds Eye and many of Australia's leading food brands from Pacific Dunlop's Pacific Brands in the mid-1990s. Today, Birds Eye is Australia's leading frozen brand. Birds Eye products are produced at the company's processing facilities in Devonport and Ulverstone, Tasmania, and Bathurst, New South Wales, as well as from imported ingredients. Some seafood items are processed overseas and the completed product imported.

Unilever review, sale to Permira

On 9 February 2006 Unilever announced it was looking to sell the Birds Eye brand, as well as the European version - Iglo (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands and Portugal). These brands were worth £836M in sales, with profits of £115M a year, and employ 3,500 staff across Europe with 1,800 located in the UK. Unilever will retain the Iglo brand in Italy, where frozen food is still popular.

On 28 August 2006, it was confirmed that Unilever had agreed to the sale of the business, held since the late 1930s, to a private equity house Permira for £1.2bn.

Brands portfolio

Headquarters in Brighton, Monroe County, New York

Birds Eye has acquired many well-established brands, some of which are distributed regionally and not nationally. The following brands are owned and distributed by Birds Eye:

• Bernstein's
• Brooks
• Comstock Wilderness
• C&W
• Freshlike
• Greenwood
• Husman's
• McKenzie's
• Nalley
• Riviera
• Snyder of Berlin, potato chip maker based near Berlin, Pennsylvania (which had been split off from pretzel manufacturer Snyder's of Hanover in Hanover, Pennsylvania in 1950)
• Steamfresh
• Tim's Cascade Snacks
• Voila

Advertising

Captain Birdseye (United Kingdom)

Main article: Captain Birdseye

In the United Kingdom, Captain Birdseye was an advertising mascot of the brand, from the 1960s to late 1990s. Appearing in numerous television and billboard commercials since 1967, he was played by the actor John Hewer between then and 1998. After the retirement of the original actor the brand was relaunched with a younger man with designer stubble (played by Thomas Pescod), but was less popular, and the character was dropped from Birdeye's advertising.

Other advertising

Child actress Patsy Kensit appeared in a 1970s advert for frozen peas - using her forefinger in her mouth to produce a popping sound. This would be followed by a jingle including the slogan "Sweet as the moment when the pod went 'pop'".

1980s campaigns included one for Potato waffles that had a jingle including the words Waffley versatile. A popular advertisement for Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills featured a scene of hungry building workers heading home in a minibus and singing about what they were hoping their partners would serve with their steak burgers. The song to the tune of Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) included the tag line "we hope its chips".

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, June Whitfield appeared in a series of television advertisements for Birds Eye products, featuring the concluding voice-over line: ".. it can make a dishonest woman of you!". The series was the brainchild of legendary advertising art director Vernon Howe and was worthy of mention in several of his obituaries.,

Since 2007, Suggs, the lead singer of English ska band Madness has been the face of all Birds Eye products. The slogan "Good Mood Food" and the Madness song "Our House" is used in all advertisements. From 2010 to 2014, all the Birds Eye foods featured a talking puppet polar bear named Clarence (voiced by Willem Dafoe).

2013 meat adulteration scandal

See also: 2013 meat adulteration scandal

In 2013, DNA tests revealed that horsemeat was present in Birds Eye chili con carne that was sold in Belgium and was produced and supplied by a Belgian group named Frigilunch. As a result, Birds Eye withdrew all other products produced by the same supplier in the UK and Ireland.

External links

• Official website