The history of FrieslandCampina does not begin in a boardroom or in a balance sheet, but in the fields of the northern Netherlands, when at the end of the 19th century small dairy producers began to organize to defend the value of their work against an increasingly concentrated market. Those first cooperatives, born to process and sell their own production, grew, merged, and expanded their scope over more than a century, until in 2008 two of them (Friesland Foods and Campina) decided to unite and give rise to Royal FrieslandCampina N.V. That merger consolidated a model that remains in place today: FrieslandCampina is a company 100% owned by producers. Its sole shareholder is the cooperative Zuivelcoöperatie FrieslandCampina U.A., made up of 14,183 dairy farmers in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, who deliver their milk exclusively and participate indirectly in the results of the business. From its headquarters in Amersfoort, the company stopped being a concentrated player in ...