I am doing research on the Starkist Tuna Company-one of the big three
Tuna companies in the US.  What I need to know is how this company is
structured-so that means knowing
1. Where are all their canneries they use for their US canned tuna are
around the world-ones they own, and ones they buy the final product
from?  If they dont own them, what is their agreement with these
canneries?  And output statistics for each plant or plants by region. 
So for example, Starkist has plants in Ghana-one possible answer would
look like this  "Starkist uses X plants in Ghana, it owns none of
them, the companies which own these planst are named X and Y (or a
government), the plants in General get a flat fee for production, or a
cut of total produced, the plants in Ghana produce a total of x cans
of lightmeat tuna, X cans of albacore tuna a year.  Thus the profits
from the plants in Ghana are X.  If histoircally the conmany owned the
cannery and then sold it, that would be useful to."
2.  A bibliographic refernce to your sources would also be useful for
checking-and need to be included.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 03 Aug 2005 16:53 PDT

Companies simply don't make available this sort of information at this
level of detail.  I think even the CEO of Starkist would have trouble
getting his hands on such detailed statistics.

You might want to re-think your project, and let us know if there's
something else we can do to assist you.

Just my 'two cents'...


pafalafa-ga

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Clarification of Question by margotcb-ga on 04 Aug 2005 07:24 PDT

Ok-if that question is too detailed, then how about a more general
one.  Without looking at one company in particular, but the big 3
specifically (Starkist, Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea) as one
group-where are the major places around the world where their
canneries are located (something like 80% of these canneries are
located in Thailand etc would be useful), and what are the major
countries which fish for tuna consumed in the US, ie, even if Tuna is
processed in Thailand, the boats that might fish for it are Chinese. 
In addition, a list of the board memebrs of each of the big 3
currently, and their total company profits for the most recent year
would be useful.

Apparently Starkist is now owned by Del Monte.  Information regarding
this can be found at the Del Monte corporate website: 
http://www.delmonte.com/Company/

There are various SEC filings available.  For example, the SEC 10k
filing for fiscal year 2005 is available here:
http://www.delmonte.com/company/Investors/Doc/77948ACL.pdf

Page 3 of that report indicates that Del Monte got Starkist (thru
Heinz) on "December 20, 2002, we acquired certain businesses from H.J.
Heinz Company (the
?Merger?), including their U.S. and Canadian pet food and pet snacks,
North American tuna, U.S. retail private label soup, and U.S. infant
feeding businesses (the ?Acquired Businesses?). The Acquired
Businesses included brand names such as StarKist, College Inn, 9Lives,
Kibbles ?n Bits, Pup-Peroni, Snausages and Pounce."

If you look through the 2002 filings, you may find the information you
are looking for, since much of it would have to have been listed with
the acquistion information.

The SEC filings for 2002 can be found here:
http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000866873&type=&dateb=&owner=include&start=240

Of course, any changes between 2002 and 2005 would not be in the 2002
filings. I hope this helps.