Allen Canning Company

International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 76 (2005) by Ed Dinger

Allen Canning Company

305 West Main Street Siloam Springs, Arkansas 72761 U.S.A. Telephone: (479) 524-6431 Fax: (479) 524-3291 Web site: http://www.allencanning.com

Private Company Incorporated: 1926 Employees: 90 Sales: $330 million (2004) NAIC: 311421 Fruit and Vegetable Canning

Allen Canning Company, based in the small town of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, is one of the largest private canner of foods in the world, offering a full line of canned vegetables to the retail food and food service industries, including a variety of southern vegetables. The company also does contract canning for major and private labels. It operates about a dozen plants, strategically located close to the growing fields in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas. Allen Canning sells its products under a dozen brand names. The Allens label offers a wide variety of beans as well as carrots, hominy, blackeyed peas, and chicken broth. The Allen name is also found on the company's Allen Italian Green Beans product line. New whole and diced potatoes and potato sticks are sold under the Butterfield label. The East Texas Fair brand is devoted to lima beans, field peas, blackeyed peas, and chick peas. Under the Freshlike brand, Allen offers a variety of vegetables, including spinach, corn, peas, and beets. The Popeye label, which features the likeness of Popeye, the venerable cartoon sailor, offers chopped and leaf spinach. The focus of the Princella, Royal Prince, and Sugary Sam labels are sweet potatoes, either cut, mashed, or candied. The Sunshine label is found on such vegetables as turnip greens, rutabagas, yellow squash, and butter beans. The Trappey's name is applied to another line of bean products, including northern beans, pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, and navy beans, as well as sweet potatoes, blackeyed peas, and okra. The Veg-All line of products include a varied of mixed vegetable combinations and regular vegetables. Finally, Allen offers the Wagon Master brand of pork and beans. Allen Canning is headed by Rick Allen, grandson of the company's founder. A fourth generation is also employed in the executive ranks and being groomed to carry on the family business.

Canning Technique Introduced in 1800s

Canning was in fact bottling when it was first developed in the early 1800s. The idea of preserving food in a container grew out of a challenge by Napoleon Bonaparte, who knew full well that an army marched on its stomach. About the only obstacle preventing him from conquering the world, it seemed, was that the food supplies of his army and navy had a tendency to spoil. In 1895 he offered a 12,000 franc prize to anyone who could find a way to solve the problem. A French chef named Nicholas Appert was determined to win the prize and spent the next 15 years working on a way to bottle food in much the same way wine was. Through trial and error Appert discovered that if food was heated and sealed in an airtight container it did not spoil. Originally it was thought that the elimination of oxygen was the key, and half a century would pass before Louis Pasteur demonstrated that it was the growth of microorganisms that was the culprit in food spoilage. By heating the food sufficiently, Appert had succeeded in killing the bacteria and enzymes that caused spoiling, then by hermetically sealing the food in a bottle he prevented new organisms from gaining an opportunity for contamination. Appert's method was given a trial by the French Navy around 1806 and was so successful it became a military secret. But like many a good idea, it was too commercial to remain a secret and was soon learned by Napoleon's arch enemy, the British.

It was an Englishman, Peter Durand, who first used tin containers, a marked improvement over bottles, which were susceptible to breaking. The first commercial canning factory was opened in England in 1813, but a year earlier immigrant Thomas Kensett launched the first canning operation in New York City for vegetables, fruits, meats, and oysters. Over the years the canning processed remained the same, but in the beginning it was time consuming, requiring about six hours to process food in a can. By the 1860s that time was reduced to about 30 minutes, the price came down, and canned food became available to the masses.

Company is Established in the 1920s

According to company lore, Allen Canning's founder Earl Allen moved to the healthy climes of the Ozark hills of Arkansas in 1922 with his wife and five children crammed into a Model T Ford. A year later he began working in a canning operation located near Siloam Springs, established in an abandoned distillery that was no longer permitted to produce liquor after prohibition took effect in 1919. Allen became the sole owner of the business in 1926 and named it after himself. It was a tiny operation and he produced just one item during his first year: 4,000 cases of tomatoes. It was also very much a family affair from the start, as his wife and children all pitched in.