Aarhus United A/S - International Expansion in the 1990s

International Expansion in the 1990s


Aarhus's relationship with United Plantations ensured its supply of raw materials. The company then turned to its own international expansion, adopting a new policy of installing production facilities close to its principal foreign markets. A first step in this strategy was achieved in 1982 with the creation of Anglia Oils Ltd. in the United Kingdom. That company launched production the following year.

The United States became the company's next growth market, with the installation of a new production facility in Port Newark, New Jersey, in 1990. That plant was specialized in the production of lauric oils. In 2002, the U.S. subsidiary began an expansion of the site, building a new and separate production system for the production of nonlauric oils.

Soon after entering the United States, Aarhus turned to Mexico as well, establishing a new production subsidiary there called Santa Lucia. Other international markets followed, including a production facility in Malaysia. By the mid-1990s, Aarhus counted six oil production plants outside of Denmark, including sites in Egypt and Norway, as well as a seventh facility, in Sri Lanka, dedicated to the production of dessicated coconut. In 1996, the company began a new $35 million expansion of its Aarhus site in order to meet the boom in demand for its specialty oils and fats.

Through the 1990s and into the 2000s, Aarhus rapidly expanded its network of purchasing and sales and marketing subsidiaries. As such, the company established offices in such markets as Australia, Hong Kong, Benin, Croatia, Poland, Ghana, and elsewhere.

The year 2000 marked a new opportunity for Aarhus. In that year, the European Commission adopted new rules that enabled manufacturers to include up to 5 percent of CBEs in their recipes and still label their products as chocolate (previous rules in some countries had allowed only the use of 100 percent cocoa butter in chocolate). The new directive promised a boom in the purchase of CBEs, and Aarhus ramped up its production capacity accordingly. After some heel-dragging, the new chocolate directive became enforced in 2003. Yet the market saw little change in the first year after the adoption of the new rules, in part as manufacturers proved reluctant to change their chocolate formulas.

Company Perspectives:

We supply customers on selected world markets with vegetable oils processed using advanced technology and formulated to meet specific needs. Within the framework of this mission, we continue to explore a series of opportunities that can lead to growth and an increased income for the group. This has, over the years, taken us into areas regarded as complementary to our main activities.


Nonetheless, CBEs remained a promising market for Aarhus. In 2003, Brazil became another country to loosen the ingredients requirement on chocolate, permitting the use of up to 10 percent of approved CBEs in a chocolate recipe. Aarhus quickly moved to position itself in that market, setting up a partnership with Uruguay's Compania Oleaginousa Uruguaya in 2004 in order to gain a foothold in the region.

In the meantime, Aarhus adopted a new identity for the new century. In 2003, the company chose to change its name—and that of its international subsidiaries—regrouping the entire company for the first time under the Aarhus United banner. The name change also underscored Aarhus's longstanding and close relationship with United Plantations. Yet Aarhus remained true to its tradition of technical innovation. In 2004, the company debuted a new range of oils with zero trans-fatty acids. With nearly 135 years of history behind it, Aarhus United had proven itself as a world leader in specialty oils.