La Serenísima

La Serenísima was established in 1929 by Antonino Mastellone, a cheese-maker from Sardinia who arrived in Argentina in 1925. Mastellone named his venture in honor of La Serenissima, a World War I-era Italian Air Force battalion which on orders to bombard Vienna, released a load of fliers urging peace, instead. The battalion itself had been named for the medieval Republic of Venice, which was widely known as La Serenissima (though the word also translates as the "most serene," or peaceful).[3]

Antonio and his brother Giuseppe Mastellone founded Hermanos Mastellone in General Rodríguez, a pampas city west of Buenos Aires, in 1927. The company became a leading area provider for a rapidly growing market in mozzarella, provolone and ricotta cheeses for Argentina's large Italian community[3] (of the 6 million Europeans who arrived in Argentina, over half were Italians).[4]

Antonino Mastellone married Teresa Aiello on October 26, 1929, and on that date, reestablished the company as La Serenísima. Mastellone brought his first delivery truck in 1935 and incorporated the company in 1942; by 1960, the company had become one of the few in Argentina which mass-produced pasteurized milk, allowing it to sell the product year-round.[3]

Establishing its own research laboratory in 1964, La Serenísima became the first in Argentina to provide nutritional facts on each bottle. The company pioneered the sale of lactose-free milk in Argentina in 1984, became the market leader in the sale of yogurt (whose local consumption more than doubled between 1983 and 1988) and introduced cultured milk locally, in 1988.[5] La Serenísima also introduced large-scale organic dairy farming in Argentina, in 1994, and became the first to fortify its products with iron sulfate.[3] The company launched an advertising blimp in 1995, though the venture ended in a November 23, 1996, crash as a result of a violent storm; no injuries were recorded.[6]

In 1994, La Serenísima began selling not-from-concentrate, perishable juices through a joint venture with Tropicana (then owned by Seagram). It was a natural partnership between Argentina's largest dairy company (with perishable product distribution capabilities and expertise) and the world's best known premium juice brand. The venture, formed by Pascual Mastellone and Mike Harbison (of Tropicana), later ended after Tropicana was acquired by PepsiCo which, without chilled product knowledge, focused only on more generic "ambient" products (including juice beverages) similar to soft drinks.[7]

The company entered into a joint venture with French retail foods giant Danone for the sale of yogurt and desserts, in 1996. It continued to develop new products for the local market, such as phytosterol-enriched milk in 2000, juices for infants, in 2001, and linoleic acid-enriched milk, in 2003. It also became more active in public service efforts, such as in the establishment of an environmental impact bureau in 2002 and of a fund-raising effort for the non-profit Favaloro Foundation, in 2003.[3]

La Serenísima, which processed over 4.8 million tons of milk annually,[3] was recognized as one of the world's most prestigious names in its sector by Global Marketing Research, in 2004. Through Danone, it introduced Activia to the Argentine market in 2005, and in June 2009, Danone reportedly entered into talks to acquire 100% of Mastellone Hermanos S.A., La Serenísima's parent company,[8] though the latter's US$260 million debt and reported opposition to the sale on the part of former President Néstor Kirchner has since delayed the deal.[9]