Prepared Foods and Food Group join BNP

Prepared Foods, April, 2001

Every weekday, our PreparedFoods.com Daily Food News column reports on the endless stream of mergers & acquisitions in the food industry. Now, it's time for me to give you an update on our new family and parent--Business News Publishing Company, or BNP for short.

Early this year, our Food Group of publications and websites became part of BNP, a 75-year old, family-owned publishing company headquartered in Troy, Michigan. BNP was founded in Detroit in 1926 by Francis Cockrell, grandfather of BNP's current president, Jim Henderson. Now with over 40 publications, BNP becomes one of the larger business-to-business publishers based in the United States.

BNP's mission, as well as our own, is to help our readers succeed in business by giving them superior information.

We do this by knowing their information needs and packaging information to fullfill them, hearing their problems and solving them, hearing their requests and responding to them quickly, and proving the value of our readers to our advertisers.

New Home Offices

All of the Food Group publications--Prepared Foods, NutraSolutions, Dairy Foods, Food Master and Food Engineering--remain together in our move to a new organization and new Chicago-area home. Located at 1050 IL Route 83, Suite 200, Bensenville, Illinois 60106, our new offices are adjacent to and just west of O'Hare International Airport.

At Prepared Foods, it is business as usual with Bob Swientek the captain and chief editor of the editorial team. Claudia O'Donnell remains our chief NutraSolutions navigator and senior technical editor on PF. Linda Ohr continues to utilize her food industry experience and BS and MS in Food Science as senior technical editor. William Roberts, associate editor; provides monthly new products and business updates, as well as posts the Daily Food News stories on our homepage and the Prepared Foods e-News Weekly electronic newsletter

2001 New Products Conference

Marge Whalen, who did a great job in coordinating her first New Products Conference in 2000, has the 2001 NPC arrangements falling in to place.

Some of the key speakers at our 19th annual gathering of the best and brightest in food product development and marketing include: John Ruff, senior vice president--North America, Technology, Quality Assurance, Scientific Relations, Kraft Foods; Ed Haft, president, Sara Lee Bakeries; William Raaths, president, Anchor Food Products; Ron Paul, president, Technomic Inc.; Lynn Dornblaser; editorial director New Product News/GNPD, Mintel; and David Jago, editorial director, Europe, GNPD, Mintel.

The 2001 conference will beheld at the Four Seasons Resort, Palm Beach, Florida, September 30 through October 3. Go to our Web page at http: // www. preparedfoods. com / npc / npc. asp. or call for more information and a reprinted article of the 2000 conference.

So, like you, we're moving ahead rapidly in an ever-evolving world. And, as always, both Tagg Henderson, group publisher of our Food Group, and I welcome your comments on our efforts and journey. Tagg is located just outside Detroit in Troy, and can be reached by phone (248-244-1291) or e-mail (HendersonT@bnp.com). My phone number is 630-694-4345 and e-mail is HlavacekR@bnp.com. Please drop us a line or give us a call!