United Fruit Company

Identity area

Type of entity

Corporate body

Authorized form of name

United Fruit Company

Parallel form(s) of name

    Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules

      Other form(s) of name

      • Boston Fruit Company (1885-1899)
      • United Brands Company (1970-1989)
      • Chiquita Brands International (1990- )

      Identifiers for corporate bodies

      Description area

      Dates of existence

      1899-1970

      History

      The United Fruit Company was an American corporation formed on 30 March 1899 as a result of a merger of the Boston Fruit Company headed by Andrew Preston and Lorenzo Dow Baker, and the Costa Rican, Panamanian and Colombian railroad and plantation holdings of American railroad financier Minor C. Keith’s Tropical Trading & Transport Company.

      Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Andrew Preston served as the company’s first president until his death in 1924. In 1930, the United Fruit Company acquired Cuyamel Fruit Company, a competitor company headed by Samuel Zemurray, who went on to become managing director in charge of operations, then president of the company from 1938 to 1951.

      By the mid-1900s, the United Fruit Company controlled (owned or leased) property made available to them by governments in multiple Caribbean and Central and South American countries including in Costa Rica, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica and Panama. The company imported products grown on its plantations in Latin America (primarily bananas but also sugar, cocoa and other tropical products) transporting them to sell in North American and European markets.

      Thomas E. Sunderland served as company president from 1960-1968. In 1970, the United Fruit Company merged with Eli Black’s AMK Corporation, renaming this new entity the United Brands Company. Following the suicide and bribery scandal involving Black and company operations in Honduras, the company rebranded itself as Chiquita Brands International in 1990.

      Places

      Legal status

      Functions, occupations and activities

      Mandates/sources of authority

      Internal structures/genealogy

      General context

      Relationships area

      Related entity

      Chiriqui Land Company (c. 1900-2003)

      Identifier of related entity

      Category of relationship

      hierarchical

      Type of relationship

      Chiriqui Land Company is the subordinate of United Fruit Company

      Dates of relationship

      Description of relationship

      Chiriqui Land Company was a subsidiary of United Fruit Company and its successors (United Brands Company, then Chiquita Brands International)

      Access points area

      Subject access points

      Place access points

      Occupations

      Control area

      Authority record identifier

      http://viaf.org/viaf/147730221

      Institution identifier

      CA UTM

      Rules and/or conventions used

      Status

      Draft

      Level of detail

      Full

      Dates of creation, revision and deletion

      Created 18 Jan. 2022 by T. Shida

      Language(s)

        Script(s)

          Sources

          Bourgois, P. (1989). Ethnicity at work: divided labor on a Central American banana plantation. John Hopkins Univ. Pr.

          Bucheli, M., & Read, I. (2001). Chronology. United Fruit Company Historical Society. Retrieved January 18, 2022, from http://www.unitedfruit.org/chron.htm

          Chiquita Brands International Inc. (1999). In D. Craft & A. Quick (Eds.), Company Profiles for Students (Vol. 1, pp. 285-289). Gale.

          Chiquita Brands International. (2000). Corporate responsibility report: Our complex history. Retrieved on January 18, 2022 from Internet Archive Wayback Machine: http://www.chiquita.com/chiquitacr1/6backgrnd/crp92.asp