Tuesday 2 July 2013

Maple Leaf Food-Safety (after outbreak)


After the 2008 incident, the company has doubled the testing of products before shipping and also improved its exploration of the results. The 2008 year was the worst in the history of company. It decreased the rating of MLF’s ratings from 66 out of 100 to 8 out of 100. Then during 2009 company used so many safety aspects to improve its reputation and because of this their reputation raised to 40 but the crisis was still damaging for the company. The crisis resulted in a 27 million dollar lawsuit.
Company is taking all the mandatory actions for future prevention. Company rebound the slice meat which was the root of the Listeriosis crisis. After crisis they started using price discounting and coupons to attract the people to buy the product. Michael McCain said “It's blindingly clear that Maple Leaf was responsible for the loss of 21 lives,” and he told a meeting of The Toronto Star’s editorial board. “I felt that personally”.
To rebound from 2008 tragedy, company used the attributes that are transparency, credibility, commitment, and honesty. Company organized the safety pledge in which the company used to take so much commitment to gain people faiths regarding products like company commit to become a global leader in food safety in which company’s chief food safety office lead to implement the best practices on sanitation, testing, technologies, product formulations and manufacturing.
1. http://www.mapleleaf.com/en/market/food-safety/food-safety-at-maple-leaf/food-safety-pledge/
2. Stanwick, P. A., & Stanwick, S. D. (2012). The food recall crisis at maple leaf foods. The Business Review, Cambridge, 19(2), 34-42. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1021060389?accountid=3455

Saturday 22 June 2013

Canada Listeriosis Outbreak-2008

Listeriosis is basically a food poisoning caused due to consuming food which is contaminated with bacteria named as Listeria monocytogenes. Animal can carry this bacteria, so meats and dairy products can be affected. In case of vegetables mainly they contaminate from soil or from manure such as fertilizer. In case of its symptoms, it includes fever, muscle ache, and sometimes nausea or diarrhea. You should also learn many things about listeria through following video: -

Now let’s talk about the listeria outbreak that was caused because of Maple Leaf Foods in summer of 2008. This outbreak was caused due to the infected sliced meat sold by maple leaf foods in starting of summer 2008. The company came to know slightly about this disease when four to five cases came in front in month of June. Then during end of July cases increased to eight which was significant and before declaring outbreak they took genetic tests of clusters of infected listeria organism. Federal officials confirmed one death and 16 more cases on mid of August then Maple Leaf Foods expanded their recall to almost 23 meat and bakery products. After August month end Public Health Authority of Canada officials declared that there are not only 15 deaths in Ontario, but also one each in Quebec, BC, and Saskatchewan. Outbreak clusters was cured to zero till September, 2009 which lead to 22 deaths. Then federal government implemented 57 new strategies to keep people safe from future disaster. Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain also apologised for this whole outbreak.

Reference: -

1.      www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsiujHGKHRs
2.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIsN5AkJ1AI
3.      Guffey, M., & Loewy, D. (2010). Business communication process & product. (6th ed., p. 317).

Saturday 15 June 2013

MLF-Products

 Maple Leaf Foods put the innovation as a key focus and they launch around 100 or more new products a year in hard effort to rejuvenate product categories and create new ones. Maple Leaf Foods divided their products into three categories, Together coordinating and complementing each other :-
  1. Meat product groups 
  2. Bakery product groups
  3. Agribusiness product groups 
Meat Product groups: - Value adder-products are produced by MLF. Brands include Maple Leaf, Schneider's. After company increased the prices in May 2013, meat volumes became weaker. McCain, the CEO of MLF, said that they were not planning additional significant cost boost up this year for its meat, which include Klik luncheon meat.

Bakery Product Groups: - MLF is leader fresh and frozen bakery and pasta products. Brands including for bakery products are Dempster’s, Olafson’s, New York bakery, Bon Matin, U.K bakery. Their North American and U.K bakery operations are the leading brands of fresh and good quality product in Canada.

Agribusiness Products Groups: - As we all know agribusiness is the business of agricultural productions. Agribusiness operations include hog productions, biodiesel and are the integral part of our protein operations. Maple Leaf Foods is widely traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol MFI.
Reference: -
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZasf0Pf8a0
2. http://www.mapleleaffoods.com/en/corporate/company-info/

Friday 7 June 2013

Ups and Downs

Lets talk about finance of Maple leaf foods first, Nowadays, shares price range is from 13.15$ to 13.26$  and in last few months the company got much loss as the company displayed a $14.8-million loss in what the company grants was a “very difficult” first quarter, but CEO Michael McCain termed the problems as both “transitory” and “self-correcting.”

“This was a very difficult quarter, with lower earnings in our protein business overshadowing good improvement in our bakery results,” McCain said. The meat business had enjoyed a steady improvement for several years, because of poor market conditions, was hurt in the quarter.
Reference: -
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/02/maple-leaf-foods-posts-14-8-million-loss-in-very-difficult-quarter/

Thursday 30 May 2013

Maple Leaf Foods-Our history



Hello everyone! My name is Manpreet singh and this is my first blog and I chose Maple Leaf Foods as my blog topic. In this blog you will get to know a lot of things about Maple Leaf Foods.
Maple Leaf Foods can touch its origins back well over 100 years through the merger of several of Canada’s premier food companies.



In 1991 Canada maple Leaf mills limited and Canada packers Inc. Merged and created the company which is now known as Maple leaf foods. Canada Maple Leaf Foods owns 90% of Canada Bread Company, which was started in 1911. 
Then after merging of companies that leaded to Canada packers are remained as isolated operating units and again starting compete with each other until the big dejection forced a revolution in their operations and then in 1932 the four companies merged to a single company. After this in 1933, operating expenses has been decreased by Canadian $7 million annually. Maple leaf mills limited was created in 1961 by amalgamation of Maple Leaf Milling Company Limited. The profit in 2000 fall to $36.8 million as compared $77.2 million in 1999.
if we talk about product, the company categorized its product in three types which are The Butcher, The Baker, The Pasta maker which contains meat, bread and the pasta respectively.
 
Reference:- http://www.mapleleaffoods.com/en/corporate/company-info/our-rich-history/history-timeline/