No matter how you slice it, Kraft Foods is big business for C-U
By DEBRA PRESSEY
News-Gazette Staff Writer

   CHAMPAIGN – Picture a line of American cheese slices so long that it would stretch from Champaign to the moon.
   That's how much American cheese they make in a year at the Kraft plant in Champaign, and Jim Grimley, plant manager, is proud of every individually wrapped slice.
   He points to a package of Kraft Singles American cheese in a display case at the Kraft plant's main lobby.
   "We're famous for that," he says.
   Kraft Foods, Champaign-Urbana's largest industry, opened its plant at the corner of Mattis and Bradley avenues in Champaign in 1963.
   At 1.6 million square feet, it is Kraft's largest plant and also holds the distinction of being the second-largest food manufacturing plant in the world, Kraft officials say.
   The Champaign plant employs 1,300 people, and houses three Kraft food businesses – cheese, salads and packaged dinners.
   On the grounds are also Kraft's largest private truck fleet and a recycling center that processes 70 percent of the plant's waste materials.
   Grimley, a longtime Kraft veteran who came to Champaign 2 1/2 years ago from a Kraft Post Shredded Wheat plant, said 140 to 200 trucks leave the Champaign plant daily with products destined primarily for Midwestern outlets.
   The products include, in addition to Singles cheese slices, such other American grocery staples as Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Velveeta cheese, Cheez Whiz, Miracle Whip, Kraft and Seven Seas salad dressings, Kraft pasta salads, Velveeta Shells and Cheese, and Taco Bell salsa in pouches for ready-to-fix Mexican dinners.
   Local Kraft managers say the plant makes so much macaroni and cheese in a year that if they lined up all the boxes, end to end, the line would wrap around the world 2.4 times.
   Kraft executives also like to quip that their Champaign cheese plant keeps 100,000 dairy cows employed.
   But perhaps more important to Champaign-Urbana is that Kraft keeps more than 1,000 local people working.
   The plant runs around the clock, and its impact on the local economy – counting taxes, payroll, utilities and goods and services purchased – totals about $200 million a year, Grimley said.
   Kraft also donates $100,000 a year to local charities focused on hunger, domestic violence and cultural enrichment.
   Grimley attributes the success of the plant to its employees, among whom the average longevity is 15 to 20 years.
   Small groups of employees are assembled daily to discuss quality improvement and workplace efficiency measures, and both employee and consumer suggestions are taken to heart, Grimley said.
   "We're very proud of the Kraft name," he said.
   Kraft's employment in Champaign was as high as 2,000 in the early 1990s, when what is now AC Humko next door was a Kraft Food Ingredients plant.
   The Humko plant was sold in 1995 to Associated British Foods, when Kraft divested its specialty oils division.
   At that time, employment at the main Kraft plant was about 1,700, but over the past five years some 400 jobs have gone the way of attrition and early retirement, Kraft officials say.
   Kraft spokeswoman Cathy Pernu said Kraft, which is part of cigarette giant Philip Morris Companies Inc., has been making strides on productivity savings companywide.
   But nobody has been forced out of a job in Champaign, she said. Employees whose jobs were eliminated had the option of working elsewhere in the plant, and some took advantage of early retirement offers Kraft made in 1996 and 1999.
   Some of the jobs were reduced due to shifts in product lines, Pernu said.
   Thirty-seven years ago, the plant opened its doors making margarine and salad dressing.
   The margarine operation was eliminated in 1996, a year after Kraft sold its table spreads business to Nabisco.
   Process cheese-making and packaged dinners began at the Champaign plant in 1971, and the following year, until 1994, the plant also did cutting and wrapping for Kraft's Natural Cuts cheeses, Pernu said.
   Made in Champaign is the liquid cheese and macaroni used in the macaroni-and-cheese dinners. The powdered cheese used in other macaroni and cheese dinners is made at another Kraft plant, Grimley said.
   In 1996, Kraft acquired the Taco Bell brand for grocery product sales, and just last year the Champaign plant began producing and packaging the Taco Bell salsa for Kraft's new ready-to-fix Mexican dinners.
   Pernu said Taco Bell Home Originals has grown into a $140 million annual business for Kraft in less than three years.
   It's also one of Kraft's answers to a major consumer trend: people too busy to cook from scratch.
   Kraft President/CEO Bob Eckert described it this way to analysts last year: Some 77 percent of American women ages 25 to 54 are now in the work force, compared to 51 percent in 1970.
   "The No. 1 question at 4 p.m. is not, 'How did the market do today?' but 'What's for dinner?' " Eckert said. "And most consumers don't have a clue."
   Pernu said Kraft also makes the nation's leading brand of salad dressings, another growth category for the company thanks to the success of several new products including the new made-in-Champaign "Special Collections" dressings targeted to women ages 35 to 54.
   Cheez Whiz, Singles American slices and Velveeta are also brand leaders in their cheese categories, Pernu said.
   "The products we're making in Champaign are doing very well," she said.
   Pernu says the Champaign plant is well-positioned for growth, should opportunities arise.
   "We're strategically well-positioned here in the central United States," she said. "We're very competitive with other plants that do what we do."
   Kraft Foods, the North American food business of Philip Morris Companies Inc., is based in Northfield.
   Kraft has eight divisions that include some of America's most well-known brand names: Maxwell House coffee, Post cereals, Oscar Mayer lunch meats, Jell-O desserts, Kool-Aid beverages, Philadelphia cream cheese, Stove Top Stuffings, and Jacks, Tombstone and DiGiorno pizzas.
   Kraft considers 99 percent of North Americans its customers, and says every day more than 100 million people in North America consume at least one Kraft product.

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