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In the short time Richard Bond has stood at the helm, he has shaped up Tyson Food’s domestic business and now is looking abroad with a keen eye.
Bond said Tyson’s Discovery Center, a $45 million, 100,000-square-foot R&D center which opened in early 2007, made it possible to launch a variety of valueadded products last year that are in line with what consumers want.
In addition to that, a cost management program he locked into place has outdone itself in stripping unnecessary costs.
“I think our ability to continue through these somewhat difficult and challenging times to [keep our] focus on our four core strategies is our company’s biggest accomplishment,” Bond told SN earlier this month.
Zooming in on those strategies has produced new, valued-added items; has cut costs drastically and, at the same time, diverted byproducts into high-margin projects such as fuel production; and has enabled the companyto stretch its global reach.
Through all this, Bond’s leadership has been well noted in the investment world.
“Dick has done an excellent job navigating Tyson Foods through a very difficult operating environment, keeping a lid on costs while still positioning the company for growth,” said Christine McCracken, senior research analyst/partner at Cleveland Research Co., a Clevelandbased equity research firm.
“The entire protein industry has experienced unprecedented change in the past year, and Dick’s leadership and years of experience should enable Tyson to weather the storm.”
As defined by Bond, the company’s core strategies are to create innovative and insight- driven food solutions; to optimize the commodity business model; to accelerate expansion globally; and to revolutionize the conversion of byproducts and raw materials into higher-margin initiatives.
“We’ve been able to use our new Discovery Center to collaborate with our customers and create new food products and bring them to market more quickly,” Bond said.
A new frozen snack line, Anytizers, was developed with customer and consumer input, and was designed for any eating occasion.
“That was a successful launch. We have most of our retail customers slotting at least three or four of those items,” Bond said.
On the commodity side, Bond has led Tyson to develop significant new efficiencies to reduce transportation costs. Indeed, the costs of moving product from one facility to another during processing have been slashed by a full 40% over the last year, and more cuts are set for the coming year.
“We used to move the front of the chicken, for example, to another place, miles away, to be deboned, then back again for further processing. By keeping the processing and further processing of an item in one location, we’ve taken two or three legs of moving product around out of the system.”
While that’s a huge money- saver, Bond stressed that the latter two components of Tyson’s core strategy are most important.
“Expanding overseas to become more of a global company, and then trying to generate every dollar we can out of our very large byproduct stream — it’s those components that will drive the growth of diversification and growth of our company from a revenue and earnings perspective,” Bond said.
— ROSEANNE HARPER
