food industry baby food founded 1891 founder raymond p. lipe john d. zieley walter h. lipe and david zieley key people jeff boutelle products peanut butter jam pork and beans ketchup chili sauce mustard spaghetti macaroni marmalade caramel fruit drops mints chewing gum and coffee website www.beechnut.com for the beechnut tree see beech . beech nut nutrition corporation is a baby food company that is owned by the swiss branded consumer goods firm hero group . 1 contents 1 history 2 timeline 3 references 4 external links history edit beech nut s roots go back to 1891 to the mohawk valley town of canajoharie new york . raymond p. lipe along with his friend john d. zieley and their brothers walter h. lipe and david zieley and bartlett arkell founded the imperial packing co. with the production of beech nut ham . the product was based on the smoked hams of raymond and walter s father farmer ephraim lipe . the company s principal products were ham and bacon for the first seven years . david and john zieley sold their shares to the lipe brothers in 1892 . the company was incorporated as the beech nut packing company in 1899 . in 1900 the company s sales were 200 000 . engineers from beech nut patented the first vacuum jar with a design that included a gasket and top that could remain intact in transit and became a standard of the industry . during the first 25 years of the 20th century the company expanded its product line into peanut butter jam pork and beans ketchup chili sauce mustard spaghetti macaroni marmalade caramel fruit drops mints chewing gum and coffee . currently jeff boutelle is the ceo of beech nut nutrition company . timeline edit 1891 founded as the imperial packing company . 1910 beech nut chewing gum line launched by director frank barbour 1956 life savers limited merged with beech nut . 2 3 1968 beech nut life savers merged with squibb part of the olin corporation to form the squibb beech nut corporation . 1973 part of the company that sold only baby food was sold to a group led by lawyer frank c. nicholas . 1977 beech nut food corporation became the first baby food company to have an entire product line without added salt . 1979 nicholas sold the baby food company to nestl . 1981 nabisco acquired life savers which includes the beech nut candy line from the e.r. squibb corporation . 1987 beech nut nutrition corporation paid us 2.2 million then the largest fine issued for violating the federal food drug and cosmetic act by selling artificially flavored sugar water as apple juice . john f. lavery the company s vice president for operations was convicted in criminal court and sentenced to a year and a day in jail ; niels l. hoyvald the president of the company also convicted served six months of community service . each of them also paid a 100 000 fine . 4 1989 ralston purina acquired beech nut from nestl . 1997 all beech nut products now free of added refined sugar . 1998 milnot holding corporation one of the portfolio of companies owned by the private equity investment firm madison dearborn partners acquired beech nut from ralcorp holdings a spin off of ralston purina . a potential merger with h.j. heinz co. was successfully challenged by the federal trade commission and never consummated . 2002 beech nut became the first baby food manufacturer to produce a line of baby food with dha and ara two essential fatty acids found naturally in breast milk . 2005 madison dearborn sold milnot and beech nut along with it to the swiss branded consumer goods firm hero group . 2007 beech nut announced its intentions to move all of its manufacturing and corporate operations to the town of florida new york . 2012 jeff boutelle named ceo of beech nut 2014 beech nut launches real food for babies a line inspired by homemade baby food . 2015 beech nut announced a recall of approximately 1 920 pounds of baby food products after receiving a single report of a small glass piece found in a jar of its baby food . 5 references edit company overview of beech nut nutrition company . bloomberg business . retrieved 11 march 2016 . business finance the management approach richards c. osborn pages 524 526 time magazine june 18 1956 corporations new wrapper james traub july 24 1988 . into the mouths of babes . new york times . retrieved 2008 10 28 . it is well within the reach of most white collar criminals to assume an air of irreproachable virtue especially when they re about to be sentenced . but there was something unusually compelling about the bearing of niels l. hoyvald and john f. lavery as they stood before judge thomas c. platt of the united states district court in brooklyn last month especially in light of what they were being sentenced for . as president and vice president of the beech nut nutrition corporation hoyvald and lavery had sold millions of bottles of apple juice that they knew to contain little or no apple juice at all only sugars water flavoring and coloring . the consumers of this bogus product were babies . beech nut nutrition recalls baby food after glass found in jar . abc news . retrieved 15 april 2015 . external links edit official website the story of a pantry shelf an outline history of grocery specialties . new york butterick publishing co. 1925 . an excerpt about beech nut from the story of a pantry shelf via the library of congress website beech nut and life savers in canada from an industry canada website frank c. nicholas biography 1970s era co owner of beech nut milnot holding corporation madison dearborn partners retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title beech nut & oldid 733716510 categories companies established in 1899food manufacturers of the united statesprivate equity portfolio companiescompanies based in new york1899 establishments in new york navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version languages deutsch edit links this page was last modified on 9 august 2016 at 17 15 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; 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