Banan-Kompaniet
AB Banan-Kompaniet is Sweden's oldest and Scandinavia 's largest banana company. AB Banan-Kompaniet's field of activity includes the cultivation, transport, ripening and marketing of bananas in Sweden.
Company history before 1945
In 1909 "The Banana Company AB" was founded by the Norwegian Carl Mathiessen in Gothenburg . Soon the name was changed to "AB Banan-Kompaniet" (Aktiengesellschaft Banana-Firma), which sounded more Swedish. The Banan-Kompaniet was one of the first companies to regularly appear in the weekly press with full-page color advertising . The well-known artist Robert Högfeldt had designed some of them. Initially, the bananas were cleared on Nybrokaj in downtown Stockholm; the warehouse was on Tunnelgatan , a cross street to Sveavägen .
In 1927, the company was able to inaugurate its new building in Stockholm's free port. Now they had direct access to their own quayside facilities and state-of-the-art banana ripening boxes of the American design in the house. The warehouse could accept up to 20,000 banana sticks.
No bananas were imported into Sweden during the Second World War , but the company quickly became one of the first European countries to get bananas back into the country after 1945.
Company history after 1945
During the 1970s and 1980s, banana ships rarely came into the Stockholm free port. Now deliveries were made by rail from European ports. The bananas no longer came as sticks, but were packed in cardboard boxes immediately after harvest, in which they remained until they reached the retailer. The system from 1927 was not adapted for this new form of distribution, and the maturing boxes were also outdated and ineffective. Since the Banan-Kompaniet did not want to leave its classic location in the free port, the building and installations were extensively renovated between 1994 and 1996. Since the building was a listed building , the renovation was carried out in cooperation with the Stockholm City Museum .
After the modernization, AB Banan-Kompaniet has 18 state-of-the-art ripening boxes and weather-independent truck and railway ramps. The company has a total of six ripening plants in Sweden and has been a subsidiary of the American Dole Food Company since 2005 . Bananas from the rival company Chiquita are also sold .
In 1910 every Swede consumed an average of 0.1 kilograms of bananas per year, in 1998 it was around 17 kilograms. In no other country in the world - apart from the growing countries - are more bananas consumed in relation to the number of inhabitants.
literature
- Erik (Bullen) Berglund: Fyffesfinesser av Bullen. Utgivna av A.-B. Banan-Kompaniet. A samling recept baserade på bananer . Ed. By: AB Banan-Kompaniet, Göteborg 1930/40. (Swedish; recipe collection for dishes with bananas as the main ingredient, approx. 14 pages)
- Evert Taube, Sven Salén, Marianne Höök: Med aventyr i lasten. Banankompaniet 50 år . Ed. By: AB Banan-Kompaniet, Göteborg 1959. (Swedish; illustrated anniversary publication on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary in 1959, approx. 125 pages)
Web links
- AB Banan-Kompaniet on the Dole website
Coordinates: 59 ° 20 ′ 29 ″ N , 18 ° 7 ′ 9 ″ E