Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, is the county seat of Allegheny County. As of 2018, a population of 308,144 lives within the city limits, making it the 63rd-largest city in the U. S; the metropolitan population of 2,362,453, is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, the 26th-largest in the U. S. Pittsburgh is located in the south west of the state, at the confluence of the Allegheny and Ohio rivers. Pittsburgh is known both as "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses and as the "City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges; the city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclined railways, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. The city developed as a vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest, as the mineral-rich Allegheny Mountains made the area coveted by the French and British empires, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, shipbuilding, foods, transportation, computing and electronics.
For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment. S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out; this heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers, research centers, a diverse cultural district. Today, Apple Inc. Bosch, Uber, Autodesk, Microsoft and IBM are among 1,600 technology firms generating $20.7 billion in annual Pittsburgh payrolls. The area has served as the long-time federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, energy research and the nuclear navy; the area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. The nation's eighth-largest bank, eight Fortune 500 companies, six of the top 300 U. S. law firms make their global headquarters in the area, while RAND, BNY Mellon, FedEx, Bayer and NIOSH have regional bases that helped Pittsburgh become the sixth-best area for U.
S. job growth. In 2015, Pittsburgh was listed among the "eleven most livable cities in the world"; the region is a hub for Environmental Design and energy extraction. In 2019, Pittsburgh was deemed “Food City of the Year” by the San Francisco-based restaurant and hospitality consulting firm af&co. Many restaurants were mentioned favorable, among them were Superior Motors in Braddock, Driftwood Oven in Lawrenceville, Spork in Bloomfield, Fish nor Fowl in Garfield and Bitter Ends Garden & Luncheonette in Bloomfield. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham; as Forbes was a Scot, he pronounced the name PITS-bər-ə. Pittsburgh was incorporated as a borough on April 22, 1794, with the following Act: "Be it enacted by the Pennsylvania State Senate and Pennsylvania House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania... by the authority of the same, that the said town of Pittsburgh shall be... erected into a borough, which shall be called the borough of Pittsburgh for ever."
From 1891 to 1911, the city's name was federally recognized as "Pittsburg", though use of the final h was retained during this period by the city government and other local organizations. After a public campaign, the federal decision to drop the h was reversed; the area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee and several other settled groups of Native Americans. The first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers Dutch, followed in the early 18th century. Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers. During 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off; the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims.
The French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years' War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne; the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddock's Field. General John Forbes took the forks in 1758. Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named "Pittsborough". During Pontiac's Rebellion, native tribes conducted a siege of Fort Pitt for two months until Colonel Henry Bouquet relieved it after the Battle of Bushy Run. Fort Pitt is notable as the site of an early use of smallpox for biological warfare. Lord Jeffery Amherst ordered blankets contaminated from smallpox victims to be distributed in 1763 to the tribes surrounding the fort; the disease spread into other areas, infected other tribes, killed hundreds of thousands. During this period, the powerful nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, based in New York, had maintained control of much of the Ohio Valley as hunting grounds by right of conquest after defeating other tribes.
By the terms of the 1768 Treaty of
Yale University
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the nine Colonial Colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Chartered by Connecticut Colony, the "Collegiate School" was established by clergy to educate Congregational ministers, it moved to New Haven in 1716 and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century, the college expanded into graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Its faculty and student populations grew after 1890 with rapid expansion of the physical campus and scientific research. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools: the original undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and twelve professional schools.
While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each school's faculty oversees its curriculum and degree programs. In addition to a central campus in downtown New Haven, the university owns athletic facilities in western New Haven, a campus in West Haven and forest and nature preserves throughout New England; the university's assets include an endowment valued at $29.4 billion as of October 2018, the second largest endowment of any educational institution in the world. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States. Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. All members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences—and some members of other faculties—teach undergraduate courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League.
As of October 2018, 61 Nobel laureates, 5 Fields Medalists and 3 Turing award winners have been affiliated with Yale University. In addition, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents, 19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices, 31 living billionaires and many heads of state. Hundreds of members of Congress and many U. S. diplomats, 78 MacArthur Fellows, 247 Rhodes Scholars and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Its wealth and influence have led to Yale being reported as amoungst the most prestigious universities in the United States. Yale traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School", passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9, 1701, while meeting in New Haven; the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregational ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, Rev. James Noyes II, James Pierpont, Abraham Pierson, Noadiah Russell, Joseph Webb, Timothy Woodbridge, all alumni of Harvard, met in the study of Reverend Samuel Russell in Branford, Connecticut, to pool their books to form the school's library.
The group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as "The Founders". Known as the "Collegiate School", the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, today considered the first president of Yale. Pierson lived in Killingworth; the school moved to Saybrook and Wethersfield. In 1716, it moved to Connecticut. Meanwhile, there was a rift forming at Harvard between its sixth president, Increase Mather, the rest of the Harvard clergy, whom Mather viewed as liberal, ecclesiastically lax, overly broad in Church polity; the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. In 1718, at the behest of either Rector Samuel Andrew or the colony's Governor Gurdon Saltonstall, Cotton Mather contacted the successful Boston born businessman Elihu Yale to ask him for financial help in constructing a new building for the college. Through the persuasion of Jeremiah Dummer, Elihu "Eli" Yale, who had made a fortune through trade while living in Madras as a representative of the East India Company, donated nine bales of goods, which were sold for more than £560, a substantial sum at the time.
Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to "Yale College".. Meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale; the 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science and theology. It had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Locke's works and developed his original theology known as the "new divinity". In 1722 the Rector and six of his friends, who had a study group to discuss the new ideas, announced that they had given up Calvinism, become Arminians and joined the Church of England, they were returned to the colonies as missionaries for the Anglican faith. Thomas Clapp became president in 1745 and struggled to return the college to Calvinist orthodoxy, but he did not close the library. Other students found Deist books in the library. Yale was swept up by the great intellectual movements of the peri
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 31 teams: 24 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is considered to be the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada; the Stanley Cup, the oldest professional sports trophy in North America, is awarded annually to the league playoff champion at the end of each season. The National Hockey League was organized on November 26, 1917, at the Windsor Hotel in Montreal after the suspension of operations of its predecessor organization, the National Hockey Association, founded in 1909 in Renfrew, Ontario; the NHL took the NHA's place as one of the leagues that contested for the Stanley Cup in an annual interleague competition before a series of league mergers and folds left the NHL as the only league left competing for the Stanley Cup in 1926. At its inception, the NHL had four teams—all in Canada, thus the adjective "National" in the league's name.
The league expanded to the United States in 1924, when the Boston Bruins joined, has since consisted of American and Canadian teams. From 1942 to 1967, the league had only six teams, collectively nicknamed the "Original Six"; the NHL added six new teams to double its size at the 1967 NHL expansion. The league increased to 18 teams by 1974 and 21 teams in 1979. Between 1991 and 2000, the NHL further expanded to 30 teams, it added its 31st team in 2017 and has approved the addition of a 32nd team in 2021. The league's headquarters have been in New York City since 1989 when the head office moved there from Montreal. After a labour-management dispute that led to the cancellation of the entire 2004–05 season, the league resumed play in 2005–06 under a new collective agreement that included a salary cap. In 2009, the NHL enjoyed record highs in terms of sponsorships and television audiences; the International Ice Hockey Federation considers the Stanley Cup to be one of the "most important championships available to the sport".
The NHL draws many skilled players from all over the world and has players from 20 countries. Canadians have constituted the majority of the players in the league, with an increasing percentage of American and European players in recent seasons; the current NHL Champions are the Washington Capitals, who defeated the Vegas Golden Knights four games to one in the 2018 Stanley Cup Finals. The National Hockey League was established in 1917 as the successor to the National Hockey Association. Founded in 1909, the NHA began play one year with seven teams in Ontario and Quebec, was one of the first major leagues in professional ice hockey, but by the NHA's eighth season, a series of disputes with Toronto Blueshirts owner Eddie Livingstone led team owners of the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs to hold a meeting to discuss the league's future. Realizing the NHA constitution left them unable to force Livingstone out, the four teams voted instead to suspend the NHA, on November 26, 1917, formed the National Hockey League.
Frank Calder was chosen as its first president, serving until his death in 1943. The Bulldogs were unable to play, the remaining owners created a new team in Toronto, the Arenas, to compete with the Canadiens and Senators; the first games were played on December 19, 1917. The Montreal Arena burned down in January 1918, causing the Wanderers to cease operations, the NHL continued on as a three-team league until the Bulldogs returned in 1919; the NHL replaced the NHA as one of the leagues that competed for the Stanley Cup, an interleague competition back then. Toronto won the first NHL title, defeated the Vancouver Millionaires of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association for the 1918 Stanley Cup; the Canadiens won the league title in 1919. Montreal in 1924 won their first Stanley Cup as a member of the NHL; the Hamilton Tigers, won the regular season title in 1924–25 but refused to play in the championship series unless they were given a C$200 bonus. The league refused and declared the Canadiens the league champion after they defeated the Toronto St. Patricks in the semi-final.
Montreal was defeated by the Victoria Cougars of the Western Canada Hockey League for the 1925 Stanley Cup. It was the last time a non-NHL team won the trophy, as the Stanley Cup became the de facto NHL championship in 1926 after the WCHL ceased operation; the National Hockey League embarked on rapid expansion in the 1920s, adding the Montreal Maroons and Boston Bruins in 1924. The Bruins were the first American team in the league; the New York Americans began play in 1925 after purchasing the assets of the Hamilton Tigers, were joined by the Pittsburgh Pirates. The New York Rangers were added in 1926; the Chicago Black Hawks and Detroit Cougars were added after the league purchased the assets of the defunct WCHL. A group purchased the Toronto St. Patricks in 1927 and renamed them the Maple Leafs; the first NHL All-Star Game was held in 1934 to benefit Ace Bailey, whose career ended on a vicious hit by Eddie Shore. The second was held in 1937 in support of Howie Morenz's family when he died of a coronary embolism after breaking his leg during a game.
The Great Depression and the onset of World War II took a toll on the league. The Pirates became the Philadelphia Quakers in 1930 folded one year later; the Senators became the St. Louis Eagles in 1934 lasting only one
Henry J. Heinz
Henry John Heinz was a German-American entrepreneur who founded the H. J. Heinz Company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he was born in that city, the son of German immigrants from the Palatinate who came independently to the United States in the early 1840s. Heinz developed his business into a national company, he was influential for introducing high sanitary standards for food manufacturing. He exercised a paternal relationship with his workers, providing health benefits, recreation facilities, cultural amenities, his descendants carried on the business until recently, selling their remaining holdings to the predecessor company of what is now Kraft Heinz. Heinz was the great-grandfather of former U. S. Senator H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania. Henry John Heinz was born in Pittsburgh on October 11, 1844, the son of German immigrants John Henry Heinz, of Kallstadt, Kingdom of Bavaria, Anna Margaretha Schmidt, of Kruspis, Hesse-Kassel, his father immigrated to the United States at age 29 in 1840, his mother at age 21 in 1843.
They were married December 4, 1843, in Birmingham, Pennsylvania, on the south side of Pittsburgh, where they first met. Anna Schmidt was the daughter of a Lutheran minister. Heinz was confirmed as a Lutheran. In life he worshipped as a member of Methodist and Presbyterian churches, worked with Baptists as well. Through his father's family, Henry Heinz was a second cousin to Frederick Trump, who emigrated to the United States in 1885. Trump was the immigrant ancestor and paternal grandfather of Donald Trump of New York City, the 45th President of the United States. Henry John Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, started marketing packaged horseradish; the company went bankrupt in 1875. The following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin Frederick Heinz. One of this company's first products was tomato ketchup; the company continued to grow, in 1888 Heinz bought out his other two partners and reorganized as the H. J. Heinz Company, the name carried to the present day.
The company's slogan, "57 varieties," was introduced by Heinz in 1896. Heinz said he chose "5" because it was his lucky number and the number "7" was his wife's lucky number. H. J. Heinz Company was incorporated in 1905, Heinz served as its first president, leading in the position for the rest of his life. Under his tutelage, the company was noted for fair treatment of workers and for pioneering safe and sanitary food preparation, he provided his employees with free medical care. Heinz led a successful lobbying effort in favor of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. During World War I, he worked with the Food Administration, he was a director in many financial institutions, was chairman of a committee to devise ways of protecting Pittsburgh from floods. At the time of Heinz's death in Pittsburgh at the age of 74, the H. J. Heinz Company had more than 20 food processing plants, owned seed farms and container factories. Heinz was the grandfather of H. J. Heinz II, the great-grandfather of U. S. Senator H. John Heinz III of Pennsylvania, great-great grandfather of Henry John Heinz IV, André Thierstein Heinz and Christopher Drake Heinz.
Another relative is Teresa Heinz-Kerry, widow of H. John Heinz III, married to ex-senator and former United States Secretary of State John Kerry. Heinz married Sarah Sloan Young Heinz on September 3, 1869, she had grown up in the Presbyterian Church. They had five children: Irene Edwilda Heinz-Given Clarence Henry Heinz Howard Covode Heinz Robert Eugene Heinz Clifford Sloan Heinz They were raised as Presbyterians. Heinz was a man of faith; when he visited England, his "tourist stops" included the graves of religious leaders John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, John Wesley. He visited a chapel that Wesley founded writing that "I felt I was upon holy ground." At the beginning of his will Heinz wrote: "I desire to set forth, at the beginning of this Will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior."A bronze statue of Heinz by Emil Fuchs was dedicated on October 11, 1924 at the Heinz Company building in Pittsburgh. Heinz died at his home May 1919, after contracting pneumonia.
His funeral was at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. He was buried in the Heinz Family Mausoleum. "Henry Heinz and Brand Creation in the Late Nineteenth Century: Making Markets for Processed Food" by Nancy F. Koehn; the Business History Review, Vol. 73, pp. 349–393. JSTOR 3116181 Media related to Henry John Heinz at Wikimedia Commons Quotations related to Henry J. Heinz at Wikiquote
Drue Heinz
Drue Heinz was a British-born American actress, arts patron, socialite. She was the publisher of the literary magazine The Paris Review, co-founded Ecco Press, founded literary retreats and endowed the Drue Heinz Literature Prize among others, she was married to president of Heinz. Born Doreen Mary English in Norfolk, England to Patrick Harry English,an Army officer, Edith English, her first husband was John Mackenzie Robertson with whom she had one daughter, Wendy Mackenzie, her second husband was Dale Wilford Maher, the first Secretary of the U. S. Legation in Johannesburg, South Africa, they had a daughter Marigold Randall. In 1953, Drue became the third wife of H. J. Heinz II president of Heinz company and heir to the Heinz fortune. With Heinz she became the stepmother of John Heinz who became a Pennsylvania United States Senator. Prior to her marriage to Heinz she was an actress; as "Doreen English" she had a small role in the 1948 movie Uneasy Terms, which starred Michael Rennie. Using the name Drue Mallory, she was cast in three 1950 movies, Please Believe Me, starring Deborah Kerr, Three Came Home and Breakthrough.
The Heinz home in Pittsburgh was called "Goodwood", in Sewickley Heights. They had an apartment in New York's Upper East Side, a winter retreat in Hobe Sound, Florida. For many years, their British home was Ascot Place at North Ascot in Berkshire. Heinz would restore them and turn them into writers' retreats, she purchased Hawthornden Castle, a medieval fortress outside Edinburgh and made it into a place for writers to live and work called the Hawthornden Literary Retreat. The Heinz Italian home, called Villa Maresi, was on Lake Como in the town of Griante, she called it "Casa Ecco", writers would go there for discussions. "She was close to Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Andy Warhol, Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser," according to Daniel Halpern, founder of Ecco Press. Of her character, Teresa Heinz said "Drue was a private person but she came to know an amazing group of people in her life, she was smart and passionate and interested in art and poetry." Of her reputation, Jonathan Galassi, Farrar and Giroux, said "Drue Heinz was the great literary philanthropist of our time.
The institutions she created and/or supported – among them The Drue Heinz Prize, The Ecco Press and The Paris Review in the United States and the Hawthornden Prize and Hawthornden Castle in the U. K. to name only a few – are monuments to the seriousness and long-standing of her commitments. Heinz died on March 30, 2018, at Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland. In 1971, with the encouragement of her friend James Laughlin, she co-founded Ecco Press. In addition to the literary magazine Antaeus, which she funded from 1970 to its closing in 1994, Ecco published many out of print books, was one of the leading US publishers of poetry. Heinz began supporting the University of Pittsburgh's fiction prize in 1980. In 1995, she endowed the prize with a $1 million gift at which point it became known as the Drue Heinz Literature Prize; the prize publishes collections of short fiction through the University of Pittsburgh Press. "The revenue from that million has exceeded the needs of the press for publication and promotion of the Heinz books so it keeps growing," said Ed Ochester, editor of the press in 2018.
Heinz endowed the Hawthornden Prize for many years. When the archives of The Paris Review were sold to the Morgan Library in 1999, Heinz paid the purchase price of $850,000. Heinz was close friends with the founder, George Plimpton, was herself publisher of the Review from 1993 to 2007. Heinz was among those who helped found the paper in 1953 and over the years help fund it. In 1970, she restored an old movie theater into the Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, the founding institution of what would become the Cultural District, Pittsburgh. Heinz gave $10 million to Carnegie Institute for the creation of the Heinz Architectural Center in 1990. Heinz supported London's Tate Gallery and the Royal Institute of British Architects. Funds from her foundation help publish the Lincoln Center Theater Review, she was the sponsor of The Royal Oak Foundation's Drue Heinz Lecture Series and served as the Foundation's Honorary Chairman. In 2002, Heinz endowed a Chair jointly held at St. John's College and the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford called the Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature.
She endowed the position of the Drue Heinz Librarian at the American Academy in Rome. She sponsored the Literary Evenings, Monday Night Lecture Series produced by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures in Pittsburgh and the Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints at the National Design Museum, she was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MacDowell Colony, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the American Academy in Rome and served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art. She joined the board of the Howard Heinz Endowment in 1973, which became the Heinz Endowments, became Director Emeritus in 1994, she was a board member of the Carnegie Museum of Art. Her private foundation, the Drue Heinz Trust, had assets of $36 million according to its 2015 tax return. Heinz was named an Honorary Dame Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in July 1995. In 2002, Heinz was selected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she was an Honorary Fell
Golden Circle (company)
Golden Circle is a subsidiary of US-based Kraft Heinz, based in Brisbane, Queensland. Its main operations are food processing. Golden Circle was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 2010, for its significant contribution to the economy of Queensland through the processing of food products notably fruit and vegetables. Golden Circle began operations in 1947 after construction of the main canning factory at Northgate was completed; the new facility was opened on 28 October 1947 by the Premier of Queensland, the Hon Edward Hanlon in the presence of 1500 people including 500 Sunshine Coast fruit growers who arrived on a special train. The company was called'Queensland Tropical Fruit Products', with'Golden Circle' used as their brand name. Golden Circle was part of the Committee of Direction of Fruit Marketing in Queensland. In 1964, under the leadership of Bernard Flewell-Smith and Percival Savage, the cannery was established as a separate business, it was split off from the COD by an amendment to the Fruit Marketing Organisation Acts.
The company processed and canned pineapples and produced fruit jams. Over the years, production has expanded to include other canned fruit and vegetables, fruit cordials, carbonated beverages and baby food; as of 2009, Golden Circle ceased to be an Australian Owned Company. The board and shareholders of GC agreed and sold all of their shares for 313% more than they were trading at prior to the offer from US Corporation, Heinz. Golden Circle was one of few remaining Australian Food Companies being sold by Australian farmers to International Companies. Australian farmers supply more than 180,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables annually to the company for processing; the fruit crops, of which pineapple is the largest, come from the Sunshine Coast hinterland, Maryborough and northern Queensland. Vegetables are sourced from the Lockyer Valley west of Brisbane. Crops that are not grown in Queensland are supplied from interstate. Golden Circle operates a A$20m food hall enabling a move into the development of new products such as baby food and a Tetra Pak plant that produces more than 42 million litres of fruit juices and drinks annually.
Golden Circle employs a large number of people, which varies seasonally between 700 and 1,700. In addition to its main processing operation in Brisbane, Golden Circle owns the Original Juice Co. plant at Mill Park, on Melbourne's northern outskirts, a fresh fruit packing operation in Griffith, New South Wales. Golden Circle manufactures more than 800 products including shelf stable fruit and vegetables, fruit juices, soft drinks, jams and baby food. Pineapple products now account for only 24% of the company's total product range; the main production facility is at a northern suburb of Brisbane. Sales offices are located in every Australian state as well as New Zealand. Australia is the principal market for Golden Circle products, but they are exported to New Zealand and other Pacific countries. On 26 September 2007, Coca-Cola Amatil announced it was making a conditional takeover bid for 100% of the companies shares. On 6 October 2008, Heinz launched a Golden Circle takeover bid. Phillip Cave advised that the take over bid of $1.65 per share was "attractive" for all shareholders given the current difficult economic conditions.
The Heinz takeover bid was finalised on 19 December 2008. In May 2011 Golden Circle announced it would move beetroot production offshore to New Zealand affecting 160 Golden Circle jobs at the Northgate Plant. HEINZ Australia said it would instead invest more than $20 million at Northgate to upgrade its beverage manufacturing facilities. Official website
HP Sauce
HP Sauce is a brown sauce produced by HP Foods in the United Kingdom, now produced by the H. J. Heinz Company in the Netherlands, it was named after London's Houses of Parliament. Since its first appearance on British dinner tables, HP Sauce has become an icon of British culture, it was the best-selling brand of brown sauce in the UK in 2005, with 73.8% of the retail market. HP Sauce has a tomato base, blended with malt vinegar and spirit vinegar, dates, rye flour, salt and tamarind, it is used as a condiment with hot and cold savoury food, as an ingredient in soups and stews. It is popular in Canada, the Republic of Ireland and New Zealand; the picture on the front of the bottle is a selection of famous London landmarks including Big Ben, the Palace of Westminster and Westminster Bridge. The original recipe for HP Sauce was invented and developed by Frederick Gibson Garton, a grocer from Nottingham, he registered the name H. P. Sauce in 1895. Garton called the sauce HP because he had heard that a restaurant in the Houses of Parliament had begun serving it.
For many years the bottle labels have carried a picture of the Houses of Parliament. Garton sold the recipe and HP brand to Edwin Samson Moore for the sum of £150 and the settlement of some unpaid bills. Moore, the founder of the Midlands Vinegar Company, subsequently launched HP Sauce in 1903. In 2013, nearly 140 years after its establishment, the Midland Vinegar Company Limited returned to the originator's family, with Nigel Britton, great-great-grandson of the founders, now being the owner. For many years the description on the label was in both French; the factory in Aston, was once bisected by the A38 motorway and had a pipeline, carrying vinegar over the motorway, from the Top Yard to the main Tower Road factory site. The Top Yard site was subsequently closed, vinegar was no longer brewed on the Aston site during the last few years of production there. HP Sauce became known as "Wilson's gravy" in the 1960s and 1970s after Harold Wilson, the Labour Prime Minister; the name arose after Wilson's wife, gave an interview to The Sunday Times in which she said: "If Harold has a fault, it is that he will drown everything with HP Sauce."
HP Sauce is available in a range of formats and sizes, including the iconic 8.99oz/255g glass bottle, plastic squeeze bottle, TopDown bottle. The ingredients vary markedly. In 2007 for example the varieties from Mexico and Canada were less concentrated. In addition, a number of other products exist under the HP brand. HP Fruity is a milder version of the Original brown sauce, using a blend of fruits including oranges and mango to give a milder, tangier taste; this variety has been renamed "HP Chicken & Rib" in Canada and the US. HP Beef is a spicier variant in Canada. HP BBQ Sauce is a range of barbecue sauces, is the UK's best selling barbecue sauce product. In March 2008, HP announced the launch of HP Steak Sauce. HP Guinness is a steak sauce. In the summer of 2008 a version with less salt and sugar than the original HP Taste was released. Since 2011 HP sauce has been manufactured with 0.8 g per 100 ml. The traditional recipe was 1.2 g sodium per 100 ml. This was a direct result of Government policy with regard to salt levels in food.
Consumers report that the taste is now more sour or tastes "off", which has led to complaints to Heinz. The brand was passed from the Midlands Vinegar Company to Smedley HP Foods Limited, acquired by a division of Imperial Tobacco sold to the French Groupe Danone SA in 1988 for £199 million. In June 2005, Heinz purchased HP Foods, from Danone. In October of that year the United Kingdom Office of Fair Trading referred the takeover to the Competition Commission, which approved the £440 million acquisition in April 2006. In May 2006, Heinz announced plans to switch production of HP Sauce from Aston to its European sauces facility in Elst, only weeks after HP launched a campaign to "Save the Proper British Cafe"; the announcement prompted a call to boycott Heinz products. The move, resulting in the loss of 125 jobs at the Aston factory, was criticised by politicians and union officials as the parent company still wanted to use the image of the House of Commons on its bottles. In the same month, local Labour MP Khalid Mahmood brandished a bottle of HP Sauce during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons as part of a protest against the Heinz move.
He made reference to the sauce's popularity with the former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These plans were confirmed on 23 August 2006 and the factory at Aston ceased production on 16 March 2007. A week a "wake" was held at the location of the factory; the factory was demolished in the summer of 2007. The tower of the factory had been a famous landmark alongside the Aston Expressway. One of the giant logos from the top of the tower is now in the collection of Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery; the six-acre Aston site was purchased by developer Chancerygate in 2007 at £800,000 per acre. HP Sauce for the Canadian market is manufactured by H. J. Heinz of Ontario. BBC News – Final Bottle of HP Official HP Sauce website Coverage of planned closure of Aston factory
