Rieber & Søn is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 food manufacturing company

Food manufacture

Food manufacture is the process by which food is manufactured.-History:Early food processing techniques were limited by the available food preservation, packaging and transportation. Early food processing mainly involved salting, curing, curdling, drying, pickling and smoking...

 the owns and produces a wide range of products and brands. The company is based in Bergen

Bergen

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....

 with more than 25 brands in 12 countries, of which 7 have manufacturing plants. The largest owner is the Rieber family, who owns close to 88 % of Rieber & Søn through the companies AS Zee Ploeg (43.53% of the total number of shares) and AS Atlantis Vest (44,38 %).

Brands owned by Rieber include Toro

Toro (food)

TORO is a Norwegian manufacturer and brand of sauces, soups and other similar produce. Owned by Rieber & Søn, the plant is based in Indre Arna in Bergen and sold 140 million consumption units divided between 750 products. Of the 900 employees, 350 work at the plant in Indre Arna.The TORO brand was...

, Denja, Mr. Lee, Vossafår, Vestlandslefsa, Geisha, Ming, Trondhjems (Norway), Mrs. Cheng’s, Frödinge

Frödinge

Frödinge is a locality situated in Vimmerby Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden with 364 inhabitants in 2005....

 (Sweden), Puttkammer & Walke (P&K) (Germany), Wolfgang Kornke's Finest Food (Austria), K-Salat, Bähncke (Denmark), Delecta (Poland), Vitana (Czech Republic and Slovakia), Chaka (Russia), Cronions and Rijnhout (the Netherlands).

The company started as a trading company

Trading company

Trading companies are businesses working with different kinds of products which are sold for consumer, business or government purposes. Trading companies buy a specialized range of products, maintain a stock or a shop, and deliver products to customers....

 and vinegar

Vinegar

Vinegar is a liquid substance consisting mainly of acetic acid and water, the acetic acid being produced through the fermentation of ethanol by acetic acid bacteria. Commercial vinegar is produced either by fast or slow fermentation processes. Slow methods generally are used with traditional...

 plant in 1839 in Bergen. A new business area is acquired through the production of substitute coffee in 1933 and in 1946 the TORO brand is launched. In 1985 Rieber bought what would be the first of many acquired brands, Denja. Two years later it merged with the building materials companies Jacob Neumann

Jacob Neumann

-Personal life:He was born in Strømsø as a son of Hans Neumann and Annechen Johanne Blom , and a grandson of Jakob Hansen Neumann. He was also a first cousin of Gustav Peter Blom and Gustava Kielland and a second cousin of Christian Blom....

 and Nodest Industrier and floated on the Oslo Stock Exchange

Oslo Stock Exchange

The Oslo Stock Exchange serves as the main market for trading in the shares of Norwegian companies. It opens at 9:00am and closes 5:30pm local time...

. Rieber entered Eastern Europe in 1992 when it bought the Czech

Czech Republic

The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

brand Vitana. In 2000 the building materials section was sold and the company chose to concentrate only on food production.