Semper

SMP, Swedish Dairy Products Inc., was founded in 1939 by Axel Wenner-Gren. This industrialist had discovered a foreign market for milk powder and built a factory for evaporation and drying using Ninni Kronberg’s method in Kimstad, Östergötland, to which he purchased surplus skim milk from surrounding dairies. World War II hindered the export initiative, and the company focused on domestic sales. In the 1940s, a large-scale factory was added in Götene, Västergötland. Infant formula and baby gruel were among the early products. The company was taken over in 1962 by the farmers’ cooperative dairies (later Arla), as a way to guarantee the sale of milk. The name Semper, which is partly a play on the abbreviation SMP and partly Latin for ‘always,’ was registered as a trademark in 1953, and the company adopted this name in 1963. In the 1980s and 1990s, investments were made in nutrition, gluten-free, and health products.