Dive Brief:
- Campbell Soup Co. is closing down its Plum Baby UK business, just 17 months after acquiring it.
- Campbell, which also owns the Plum Organics line of baby foods, said the closure will not affect Plum Organics or any U.S. operations.
- The move follows a recall late last year of U.S.-made Plum products in the U.K.
Dive Insight:
The Plum plan that Campbell seemed so positive about last year has ended. And in hindsight, the entire thing seemed dogged by problems.
First, there was the decision to buy two completely unrelated companies -- first the one in England and then the one in the U.S. -- seemingly because they had similar names and served the same audience. But getting UK families to abandon "their" Plum Baby wasn't easy after the recall of some of the first shipments of American-made food. Add in the fact that Plum here in the U.S. has a particularly unusual corporate structure, and it's no wonder that the Plum combos didn't bear fruit.