Danone

Danone S.A. (French pronunciation: [danɔn]) is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in 1919 in Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris, where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index. Some of the company's products are branded Dannon in the United States.

As of 2018, Danone sold products in 120 markets, and, in 2018, had sales of €24.65 billion. In the first half of 2018, 29% of sales came from specialized nutritional preparations, 19% came from branded bottled water, and 52% came from dairy and plant-based products (including yogurt).

Danone was founded by Isaac Carasso (born İzak Karasu), a Thessaloniki-born Sephardic Jewish physician from the Ottoman Empire, who began producing traditional yogurt in Barcelona, Spain in 1919. The brand was named Danone, which translates to "little Daniel", after his son Daniel Carasso.

In 1929, Isaac Carasso moved the company from Spain to France, opening a plant in Paris. In 1942, Daniel Carasso moved the company to New York. In the United States, Daniel Carasso partnered with the Swiss-born Spaniard Juan Metzger and changed the brand name to Dannon to sound more American.

In 1951, Daniel Carasso returned to Paris to manage the family's businesses in France and Spain, and the American business was sold to Beatrice Foods in 1959; it was repurchased by Danone in 1981. In Europe in 1967, Danone merged with Gervais, the leading fresh cheese producer in France, and became Gervais Danone.

In 1973, the company merged with bottle maker Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel (BSN), which was formed by the merger of Glaces de Boussois, France's 2nd-largest producer of flat glass, with Lyon-based Verreries Souchon-Neuvesel, France's top producer of bottles and jars. Souchon-Neuvesel, based in the Lyon region, produced bottles, industrial containers, flacons and table glassware (container glass). Glaces de Boussois, located in northern France, made windows for the building and automobile industries (plate glass). Three years earlier BSN had merged with Evian, Kronenbourg, Société Européenne de Brasseries and Blédina.

The company changed its name to Groupe Danone in 1983.

The acquisitions initially took the shape of vertical integration, with BSN acquiring Alsatian brewer Kronenbourg and Evian branded mineral water who were the glassmaker's largest customers. This move provided content with which to fill the factory's bottles. In 1973, the company merged with Gervais Danone and began to expand internationally, including a rebranding of the Dannon yogurt brand in the U.S. and a successful ad campaign In Soviet Georgia that started in October 1976. In 1979, the company abandoned glassmaking by disposing of Verreries Boussois. In 1987, Gervais Danone acquired European biscuit manufacturer Générale Biscuit, owners of the LU brand, and, in 1989, it bought out the European biscuit operations of Nabisco, The operation included UK manufacturers Huntley and Palmers, Peek Frean, and Jacob's, which had previously merged to form Associated Biscuits Ltd.