Universal Robina Corporation, abbreviated as URC and also known as Universal Robina, is a Philippine company headquartered in

Quezon City Quezon City (, ; ), also known as the City of Quezon and Q.C. (read and pronounced in Filipino language, Filipino as Kyusi), is the richest and List of cities in the Philippines, most populous city in the Philippines. According to the 2020 c ...

. It is one of the largest food and beverage companies in the Philippines, along with

San Miguel Corporation San Miguel Corporation (), abbreviated as SMC, is a Philippine multinational conglomerate with headquarters in Mandaluyong, Metro Manila. The company is one of the largest and most diversified conglomerates in the Philippines. Originally fo ...

Monde Nissin Monde Nissin Corporation, commonly known as Monde Nissin or abbreviated as MNC, is a Philippine multinational food and beverage company with a portfolio of brands across instant noodles, biscuits, baked goods, culinary aids and alternative m ...

, Mondelez Philippines and Nestlé Philippines. URC is a core subsidiary of JG Summit Holdings, Inc. (JGSHI) which is one of the largest business conglomerates listed in the

Philippine Stock Exchange The Philippine Stock Exchange, Inc. (; ) is the national stock exchange of the Philippines. The exchange was created in 1992 from the merger of the Manila Stock Exchange and the Makati Stock Exchange. Including previous forms, the exchange has ...

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History

The company was founded on September 28, 1954 by John Gokongwei, Jr. under the name Universal Corn Products (UCP) after Gokongwei decided to construct a corn milling plant to produce glucose and cornstarch. In 1961, Consolidated Food Corporation (later known as CFC Corporation) was established. The company's first product was Blend 45

instant coffee Instant coffee is a beverage derived from brewed coffee beans that enables people to quickly prepare hot coffee by adding hot water or milk to coffee solids in powdered or crystallized form and stirring. The product was first invented in Inver ...

. It became one of the best-selling instant coffee brands in the local market, beating

Café Puro Café Puro is a coffee brand in the Philippines owned by Commonwealth Foods, Inc. The brand was introduced in 1952, along with the company's several (now defunct) coffee brands—Café Bueno, Café Excellente and Lé Café—in ground and insta ...

and

Nescafé Nescafé is a brand of instant coffee sold by the multinational food and drink corporation Nestlé. It comes in many different forms. The name is a portmanteau of the words "Nestlé" and "café". Nestlé first introduced their flagship coffee br ...

at that time. After the success of Blend 45, the company launched the Presto brand to enter the chocolate segment in the late 1960s with its cocoa powder, powdered chocolate drink and confectionery. It later launched Nips, a brand of chocolate candies similar to

M&M's M&M's are color-varied sugar-coated dragée chocolate confectionery by the Mars Wrigley Confectionery division of Mars Inc.. The candy consists of a candy shell surrounding a filling which determines the specific type of M&M's. Each piece has ...

. It became a staple among Filipino children. In 1963, Robina Farms started their operations with poultry products. This mark the beginning of the vertical integration of the Gokongwei businesses, as the farms would be able to purchase feeds from UCP in the future. In the same decade, Robichem Laboratories was established for the veterinary needs of the farms' businesses. In the 1970s, Robina Farms expanded their operations as they entered the piggery business. In 1966, SmithKline Beecham (SBS) was established. It pioneered the snack food industry in the Philippines with its Jack 'n Jill brand. In 2010, SmithKline Beecham Corporation would be merged with GSK. In 2014, URC announced a joint venture with

Danone Danone S.A. () is a French multinational corporation, multinational food-products corporation based in Paris. It was founded in 1919 in Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. It is listed on Euronext Paris, where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock mark ...

for a beverage production and distribution business in the Philippines. In the same year, URC established a joint venture with

Calbee is a Japanese snack food maker. It was founded on 30 April 1949, and its headquarters are located in the Marunouchi Trust Tower Main in Marunouchi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Chiyoda, Tokyo. It launched operations at a new plant in the United States for ...

to establish local manufacturing for Calbee products. The joint venture was later terminated in 2018 upon Calbee selling its shares to URC. Also in the same year, URC expanded to Oceania by acquiring

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

-based biscuit company,

Griffin's Foods The Griffin's Foods Company is a New Zealand food industry, food company currently headquartered in Auckland and established by John Griffin as a flour and cocoa mill in the city of Nelson, New Zealand, Nelson in 1864.Snack Brands Australia Snackbrands (SBA) is one of the largest suppliers of snack foods in Australia and acts as the main competitor to the long established The Smith's Snackfood Company. The company was founded in August 1998 as a subsidiary of parent company Sna ...

in 2016. In December 2019, URC and German company

Intersnack Intersnack Group GmbH & Co. KG is a German snack food company that annually produces around 600,000 tonnes of snacks including potato chips, nuts, baked products and specialty snacks. The company made its first potato chips in 1968. The company ...

formed Unisnack ANZ, a joint venture comprising Griffin's Foods and Snack Brands Australia. Intersnack held a 40% stake in the consolidated business. However, URC would exit the venture in August 2021 by selling its stake in Unisnack ANZ to Intersnack. In November 2021, URC entered an agreement to purchase

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

-based Munchy's from

CVC Capital Partners CVC Capital Partners plc is a Jersey-based private equity and investment advisory firm with approximately €186 billion of assets under management and approximately €157 billion in secured commitments since inception across American, European, ...

for US$454 million.

Presence

URC is based in

and as of 2018 has 19 production sites in the Philippines. It also has production sites in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Myanmar Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar; and also referred to as Burma (the official English name until 1989), is a country in northwest Southeast Asia. It is the largest country by area in Mainland Southeast Asia and has ...

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

Vietnam Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of about and a population of over 100 million, making it the world's List of countries and depende ...

and

. The company also maintains an exclusive distributor presence in

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

and

Cambodia Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...

, as well as sales offices in

Hong Kong Hong Kong)., Legally Hong Kong, China in international treaties and organizations. is a special administrative region of China. With 7.5 million residents in a territory, Hong Kong is the fourth most densely populated region in the wor ...

and

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

Sports

URC owned the

Philippine Basketball Association The Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) is a men's professional basketball league in the Philippines, composed of twelve company-branded Franchising, franchise teams. Founded in 1975, it is the first professional basketball league in Asia ...

franchise

Great Taste Coffee Makers The Great Taste Coffee Makers were a basketball team that played in the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) from 1975 to 1992. It was one of the founding members of the PBA, the Asia's first and oldest professional league. The franchise wa ...

which played from the inaugural 1975 season to

1992 1992 was designated as International Space Year by the United Nations. Events January * January 1 – Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt replaces Javier Pérez de Cuéllar of Peru as United Nations Secretary-General. * January 6 ** The Republ ...

when the company sold the team to Sta. Lucia Realty. The Coffee Makers won six PBA championships.

Notes

References

External links