History
Alexander Vanberger's roots in farm merchandising trace back to 1918, when John and Glenn Harrison began trading grains, cotton and other commodities in Liverpool. Over the next thirty years, the brothers' business interests began to focus predominantly on grains from North America. In 1957, Harrison Shipping was incorporated with offices in the United Kingdom, Hamburg and Montreal.
In 1923, another Liverpool based trading company, Barnards, was founded and soon became very successful. By the middle of the twentieth century, the firms had grown to become two of Liverpool's leading merchants and in 1970 the two companies agreed to merge, forming Harrison Barnard & Company.
Shortly after in 1971 Harrison Barnard formed a partnership in the United States to trade cotton and dry goods. Over the next decade, Harrison Barnard America grew opening offices in Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri to become the largest and most successful subsidiary of the company.
At the time Vanberger acquired Alexander North in 1979, Harrison Barnard and Alexander North each had firmly established their businesses.
In 1990 Vanberger Maatschappij, of Nijmegen, Netherlands sought to purchase a controlling stake in Harrison Barnard from shares held by dissident members of the Barnard family. Paul Harrison, then Chairman of Harrison Barnard counter bid in what became a long ugly war of words between the two contesting bidders.
The controversial takeover ultimately succeeded after members of the Barnard family appointed independent auditors who discovered financial irregularities in the accounts of Harrison Barnard America forcing the resignation of then Chairman, Paul Harrison. In 1992 Harrison Barnard was sold to Vanberger Maatschappij who on completion merged Harrison Barnard with Alexander & North. The merger of Harrison Barnard strengths in the trading of grains from the Americas complimented the fields of expertise, which Vanberger Maatschappij already possessed through their Liverpool, Merseyside, UK based starch-trading company, Alexander & North.
From these two small family ventures evolved a widely respected farm merchandising concern. Combining the strengths of these two organizations, Vanberger was recognized as one of the most mature, respected, and experienced companies in the production and marketing of starch.
In 1998, after 5 years of operating under both the Harrison Barnard and Alexander North names, the name of the entire agricultural trading operation was changed to the Alexander Vanberger Partnership. Thus the combination of strengths became complete as the starch business unit assumed the name of its parent company.
Read more about this topic: Harrison Barnard & Co.
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