The Glad Products Company
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Plastic ware |
| Founded | 1963 |
| Headquarters | Oakland, California, U.S. |
| Products | plastic wrap food storage |
| Owner |
Clorox (80%), Procter & Gamble (20%) |
| Website | www.glad.com |
The Glad Products Company is an American company specializing in trash bags and plastic food storage containers.
The Glad brand originated in the United States in 1963 when the owner and CEO of the company, David Darroch, launched "Glad Wrap", a polyethylene film used as a food wrap. Douglas G. Taylor was transferred that same year from the Union Carbide facility in Pittsburgh, Pa. to spearhead the Glad project. Mr. Taylor headed Sales and Marketing for the Glad products until he was retired from Union Carbide in 1985 after putting together the sale to FirstBrands. At the time of the sale Mr. Taylor was Sr. VP of the Home and Automotive products division as well as the head of STP brands. Douglas G. Taylor died in Hilton Head, South Carolina. August 13, 1996.
The brand originally belonged to Union Carbide, but was divested in 1985 to First Brands Corporation (Eveready and Energizer batteries, Glad, Simoniz, and Prestone) in the United States. In 1998, First Brands was acquired by Clorox. In 2002, Clorox allowed Procter & Gamble to buy a 10% share in Glad Products Company, thus making it a joint venture. Three years later, P&G exercised its option under the agreement to increase its ownership to 20%, the maximum allowed under the joint venture agreement.
Glad Wrap was invented in Australia by Union Carbide's research chemist, Dr Douglas Lyons Ford, in the early 1960s, working in Union Carbide Australia's Rhodes plant in Sydney. The film was made from polyethylene with a stickifier added, produced as a continuous tube by the blown-film method, the tube then slit to make flat material that was put on rolls, and recently released in a newly designed "Easy Cut Dispenser". It was first introduced to the American market in 1963 in competition with Saran Wrap.
Glad Wrap and Glad Bags were introduced in Australia in 1966; Glad was the first to introduce cling-type wrap to the Australian market.
In order to promote the product, a competition was run in The Australian Women's Weekly asking readers to write in with suggested uses for the product. The winner of the competition was Lady Gwynnedd Casey, the wife of Lord Casey, the then Governor-General of Australia, who suggested it could be used to cover the hors d'ouvres before guests arrived at her garden party. Second prize went to a woman from western Sydney, who suggested it could be used to wrap up different kinds of buttons in her sewing kit to keep them separate from one another.
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Wikipedia