The announcement today that Kraft foods and Heinz will be merging to form one of the largest food companies in the world, had us digging into The Global 5000 database to take a look at where they will rank and how the industry stacks up.
Looking at the broad ‘food’ group which includes beverages, farming, food products and tobacco companies, we have 258 companies in that segment in The Global 5000. They represent approximately $21 trillion of revenue annually. Growth has been very slow compared to other industries with just a 2.1% growth rate in 2013 (the last reported full year). Both Heinz and Kraft have had flat revenues for a couple of years – perhaps one of the drivers to find a new way to move forward.
Kraft and Heinz were numbers 30 and 49 respectively on our list of top food companies. The merger into one larger company will put them into the top 20 globally. If we take an approximate pro forma look at the top companies should this deal take place, the top 20 would look like this
- Cargill
- Nestle
- Archer Daniels Midland
- Philip Morris International, Inc.
- PepsiCo, Inc.
- Unilever
- Bunge, Ltd.
- Coca-Cola Company
- Imperial Tobacco Group
- CHS, Inc.
- Wilmar International Ltd
- Anheuser-Busch InBev
- JBS S.A.
- Mondelez International, Inc.
- Tyson Foods
- Mars
- COFCO
- Kraft Foods Group
- Groupe Danone
- Compass Group plc