I was struck today by a piece of news that in itself was not very striking: a Mexican corporation acquires a tortilla company. It’s the details that surprise:

GRUMA has acquired Rositas Investments PTY LTD, a company that manufactures tortillas in Australia; the closing of this acquisition was Friday, January 27, 2006. The purchase price was $17.6 million Australian dollars, or approximately $13.3 million U.S. dollars.

Rositas, with annual sales of approximately $22 million, manufactures tortillas
primarily in the institutional segment, but also sells through retail chains. Its products are sold under the “Rositas” brand name, which has great acceptance with the Australian consumers.

An Australian tortilla company, no less. I had no idea that tortilla production was now an international industry. Especially when in places like Spain you are hard-pressed to find an edible tortilla. The tortillas made available to the Spanish consumers are either Old El Paso brand (previously only at certain supermarkets) or the new line of tortillas by Bimbo. Apparently the Spanish market is so unfamiliar with this food item (which, incidentally, shares the name of what is arguably the quintessential Spanish dish) that Bimbo has had to name them “Roll’s” (why in English? why the apostrophe? who knows?)
Given this general lack of popularity of tortillas in a Spanish-speaking European market with a large Latin American immigrant population, it is surprising that large-scale tortilla production is happening Down Under.

“With this acquisition, GRUMA reinforces its presence in the international markets and, together with its next tortilla plant in China, it will be better suited to supply the Asia and Oceania markets.”

I always thought that Mu Shu Pork wrappers were suspiciously similar to tortillas de harina.

Hispanic Business.com

Tags: latino market,tortillas, business,international marketing,food,mexican food

A funny (or not so funny, depending on how you look at it) story in the NYT today about my hometown’s new soccer team, its name and the harsh lesson in branding its organizers have had to stomach. At a time when cities are forming soccer leagues solely to satisfy a Latino market need, it’s pretty amusing when the name of the team itself isolates — even infuriates — the very market it’s meant to woo:

HOUSTON, Jan. 26 — What better way to honor the brash origins of this city, the owners of Houston’s new professional soccer franchise reasoned, than to name their team “Houston 1836,” a nod to the year when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.

Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team’s name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of secession that resulted in Mexico’s loss of Texas, ushering in more than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the state.

Read the whole NYT article here. Highly recommended.

Happy Friday!

Tags: latino marketing, soccer,hispanic marketing,branding