Type | Sociedad Anonima |
---|---|
Industry | Beverages, Brewing |
Founded | 1908 |
Headquarters | Heredia, Costa Rica |
Key people | |
Products | Beers, soft drinks, canned goods |
Revenue | US$1.13 billion (2015-2016) [1] |
US$ 174 million (2015-2016) [1] | |
Number of employees | +6,300 (2015) [2] |
Website | www.fifco.com |
Florida Ice and Farm Company S.A. (abbreviated as FIFCO) is a Costa Rican food and beverages company headquartered in the province of Heredia, Costa Rica. It has a catalog of over 2000 products, [3] sold in over 15 countries. [4]
FIFCO is structured as a holding company with three subsidiaries: Florida Bebidas (food and beverages), Florida Capitales (investments in bottling facilities), and Florida Inmobiliaria (investments in resort hotels). [4]
In 1908, the Lindo Brothers of Jamaican origin, founded a company in Siquirres, the third canton in the province of Limón, one of seven provinces in Costa Rica. The newly formed company was dedicated to agriculture and the making of ice. The finca (property) in which the company was located was called "La Florida", from which the company took its name of "Florida Ice and Farm Company". The brothers used an English name due to the fact that English was their native language, as it was for many Caribbean migrants who lived in the Atlantic region of Costa Rica. [5] With that same company, they purchased the brewery and beverages business owned by José Traube in 1912. This is how a company that was mainly an agricultural concern entered the beverages market. [5]
In 1958, the company purchased Cervecería Ortega. Founded in 1910 by the Ortega Family of Spanish origin, the Ortega brewery had been one of the main competitors with brands such as Imperial and Bavaria. [5] The consolidation of these breweries allowed FIFCO to make investments in a new brewery and bottling plant [5] which it called “Cervecería Costa Rica” in 1966. [6] The plant is located in Río Segundo de Alajuela. [5]
In 1979 the company went public and commenced trading on the Bolsa Nacional de Valores (the Costa Rican National Stock Exchange). [7]
In 1995 FIFCO introduced the "Rock Ice" beer to the local market, which highlighted the innovative use of "ice brewing". [5] In 1998 the company acquired “Cervecería Tropical”. [6] In 2001, the company introduced its line of fruit refreshments "Tropical", and also began distributing the Tampico brand locally. [5]
In 2006 the company purchased Industrias Alimenticias Kern's y Compañía S.C.A. for $86 million. [8] The move further diversified its operations and brought along with it the canned beans, sauces, and pasta products under the Kern's and Ducal brands. [8]
In 2007, FIFCO purchased the operations of SAB Miller in Costa Rica for US$116 million. The purchase included the distribution rights for Pepsi Cola in the country, as well as some real estate investments. [9]
In 2008 after two years of the opening of political relationships between China and Costa Rica, the company signed a contract with Tsingtao that allowed it to start exporting its beer and refreshments into China, as well as importing Chinese beverages into Costa Rica. [10]
In 2011 FIFCO purchased Corporación Musmanni, a large bakery chain in Costa Rica with franchisees in Central America and the Caribbean. [11] In March 2012 the company entered the dairy market with the purchase of Coopeleche R.L.; the move put pressure on Cooperativa de Productores de Leche R.L. (Dos Pinos) which has dominated the Costa Rican dairy market for years. [4]
In October 2012 FIFCO purchased North American Breweries Holdings (NAB) from KPS Capital Partners, for US$388 million through its subsidiary Cervecería Costa Rica S. A. NAB sells Genesee and Labatt beer in the United States, as well as craft or small batch beers including Magic Hat and Pyramid. [12]
Under contract FIFCO brews Heineken beer at its facility at La Ribera de Belen. [13]
Costa Rican cuisine is known for being mostly mild, with high reliance on fruits and vegetables. Rice and black beans are a staple of most traditional Costa Rican meals, often served three times a day. Costa Rican fare is nutritionally well rounded, and nearly always cooked from scratch from fresh ingredients. Owing to the location of the country, tropical fruits and vegetables are readily available and included in the local cuisine.
Empresas Polar is a Venezuelan corporation that started as a brewery, founded in 1941 by Lorenzo Alejandro Mendoza Fleury, Juan Simon Mendoza, Rafael Lujan and Karl Eggers in Antímano "La Planta de Antimano", Caracas. It is the largest and best known brewery in Venezuela, but has since long diversified to an array of industries, mostly related to food processing and packaging, also covering markets abroad.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría is a Costa Rican economist, lawyer, businessman and politician who served as President of Costa Rica from 1998 to 2002. He was minister of planning from 1968 to 1970 and minister of the presidency in 1970 during the administration of Jose Joaquin Trejos Fernandez ; member of the board of the Costa Rican Central Bank from 1966 to 1969; congressman from 1990 to 1993, serving as president of the Legislative Assembly during the 1991 to 1992 period; and was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2004. He voluntarily stepped down from this post to return to his country to face allegations of financial wrongdoing during his presidential tenure in Costa Rica. On April 27 of 2011 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but this ruling was later reversed in a December 2012 decision by an appeals court, which found him innocent of all charges.
Alajuela is a province of Costa Rica. It is located in the north-central part of the country, bordering Nicaragua to the north. It also borders the provinces of Heredia to the east, San José to the south, Puntarenas to the southwest and Guanacaste to the west. As of 2011, the province had a population of 885,571. Alajuela is composed of 16 cantons, which are divided into 111 districts. It covers an area of 9,757.53 square kilometers.
Pyramid Breweries, Inc., is a brewing company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It produces beer under the Pyramid brand at two breweries and several brewpubs in Washington, Oregon, and California. It was founded in 1984 as Hart Brewing, and is currently owned by North American Breweries, a subsidiary of the Costa Rican company Florida Ice & Farm Co.
Ambev, formally Companhia de Bebidas das Américas, is a Brazilian brewing company now merged into Anheuser-Busch InBev. Its name translates to "Beverage Company of the Americas", hence the "Ambev" abbreviation. It was created on July 1, 1999, with the merger of two breweries, Brahma and Antarctica. The merger was approved by the board of directors of the Brazilian Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) on March 30, 2000. The organization's headquarters are in São Paulo, Brazil. It is one of the largest companies by market capitalization in Brazil and in the Southern hemisphere.
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History of beer in Mexico dates from the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire. While Mesoamerican cultures knew of fermented alcoholic beverages, including a corn beer, long before the 16th century, European style beer brewed with barley was introduced with the Spanish invasion soon after Hernán Cortés's arrival. Production of this beer here was limited during the colonial period due to the lack of materials and severe restrictions and taxes placed on the product by Spanish authorities. After the Mexican War of Independence, these restrictions disappeared, and the industry was permitted to develop. Furthermore, the arrival of German immigrants and the short-lived empire of Austrian Maximilian I in the 19th century provided the impetus for the opening of many breweries in various parts of the country.
Cervecería y Maltería Quilmes is an Argentine drink company founded in 1890 in the city of Quilmes in Greater Buenos Aires. The company was established by Otto Bemberg, a German immigrant, in 1890 as a beer manufacturer. Since 2002, Quilmes is owned by AmBev, the largest beer manufacturer in the world.
Genesee Brewing Company is an American brewery located along the Genesee River in Rochester, New York. From 2000 to 2009, the company was known as the High Falls Brewing Company. In 2009, High Falls was acquired by the capital investment firm KPS Capital. Together with newly acquired Labatt USA, KPS merged the two companies as North American Breweries. Along with this change, High Falls Brewery changed its name back to the original "Genesee Brewing Company" operating under the North American Breweries name. In October 2012, North American Breweries was purchased by FIFCO
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Portland Brewing Company was a brewery in Portland, Oregon. A pioneer in Portland's early craft brewing scene, it was known as MacTarnahan's Brewing Company from 2004 to 2013 before resuming its original name. It was closed by the Costa Rican company that owned it, Florida Ice & Farm Co., in early 2021.
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This article discusses beer in Central America.
Costa Rica has a very strong beer industry centered on mass-produced Lagers. Imperial beer, produced by Florida Ice & Farm Co. is known and associated with Costa Rica all around the world.
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Cooperativa de Productores de Leche Dos Pinos R.L is a Costa Rican cooperative producer of dairy, beverages, and candy products headquartered in Alajuela, Costa Rica. It has a brand portfolio of over 600 brands and its products are sold throughout Central America and the Caribbean.
Mauricio Herrera Ulloa is a Costa Rican journalist and the current Costa Rican ambassador to Honduras. Herrera was previously the Minister of Communication under the presidency of Luis Guillermo Solís, the chief editor of the University of Costa Rica's newspaper Semanario Universidad, the Director of Communications at the Center for Justice and International Law, and the defendant of the landmark case Herrera Ulloa vs. Costa Rica before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.