Mars, Incorporated
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Image:Logo mars.gif Mars Incorporated is a world-wide manufacturer of confectionery with $18 billion (USD) in annual sales (2005). Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, USA the company is entirely owned by the Mars family, making it one of the largest privately-owned U.S. corporations. The US Division, known as Masterfoods USA, is based in Hackettstown, New Jersey. The European Division, known as Masterfoods Europe, is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium and Veghel, Netherlands . Moving into third generation family ownership, the company recently passed from family leadership into non-family leadership; however, the business is still owned by the family. The company has come under some critisism from not offering any Fairtrade branded products.
Mars is most famous for their Milky Way, Mars, M&M's, Twix and Snickers confectionery, as well as pet foods (such as the well-known Whiskas, Chappy and Pedigree brands), human foods (including Uncle Ben's) and non-confectionery snack foods (including Combos).
A division of Mars known as Mars Electronics, Inc. (MEI) produces vending machines for both hot and cold drinks (through its Four Square division), and bill and coin acceptors. They are one of the most common bill acceptors found in the U.S.
A division of Mars known as Information Services International (ISI) manages the information systems for Mars. Their head offices are in the US, France, and the UK.
The company was founded in Tacoma, Washington in 1911, when Frank C. Mars and his wife Ethel started producing and selling candy. In 1920 [1] he invented the Milky Way. The company grew quickly. In 1963 a large factory was opened in Veghel, the Netherlands.
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The Five Principles
Mars has five fundamental beliefs for their corporate culture:
- Quality - "The Consumer is our boss, quality is our work and value for money is our goal."
- Responsibility - "As individuals, we demand total responsibility from ourselves; as associates, we support the responsibilities of others."
- Mutuality - "A mutual benefit is a shared benefit; a shared benefit will endure."
- Efficiency - "We use resources to the full, waste nothing and do only what we can do best."
- Freedom - "We need freedom to shape our future; we need profit to remain free."
Products
Many of Mars' products are famous-name brands, including:
- Celebrations
- Dove Chocolate
- Galaxy
- Lockets
- M Azing
- Maltesers
- Mars
- M&M's
- Milky Way
- Snickers (The top-selling candy bar in the United States. Known in the UK as Marathon until 1990.)
- Three Musketeers
- Skittles
- Starburst (Originally Opal Fruits in the UK.)
- Twix
- Bounty
- Topic
Other confections, no longer produced, include:
- Opal Mints
- Spangles
Mars Limited
Mars Limited is the name of the British branch of Mars, Inc. The company is based in Slough, England. Some Mars brands manufactured in the United Kingdom but not the United States include Galaxy Milk Chocolate, Maltesers and Tunes.
The bar called Milky Way in the US is sold as Mars in the UK, where the name Milky Way is used for what in the States is called the 3 Musketeers. The bar formerly sold in the U.S. as the Mars bar is now marketed in that country as the "Snickers Almond Bar" and is not sold consistently in the UK where it has appeared with other special editions that are released occasionally.
Most Mars products for the UK market are made in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire.
See also
Most confectionery products for Europe are produced in Slough, England (although fewer since the company announced plans recently to abandon a long-standing lease on a factory on Liverpool Road), Veghel (Holland), and Viersen (Germany.) Melton-Mowbray produces primarily pet foods.
External links
- Mars Inc. corporate web site
- Company profile from Yahoo!
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