Three milling brothers, one mill that lasted.

Odlums traces itself to 1845 and to a flour mill in Maryborough, the midlands town now called Portlaoise. A history the company published in 2007 says three Odlum brothers ran separate milling businesses in the nineteenth century, and that the one which became today’s company was the Maryborough mill opened by William Odlum in 1845. He was succeeded by his two sons, William P. and Richard Odlum, and the business traded under both their names as W.P. & R. Odlum.

The firm grew by adding mills. By the end of the 1920s, the same company history says, it was operating nine mills in conjunction with other milling interests. In the 1960s, in the company’s account, rising living standards brought a fall in flour consumption and pushed a number of Irish millers out of business; Odlums rationalised its production and closed some of its smaller mills. By 2007 it had settled on three modern flour mills, in Dublin, Cork and Portarlington, plus a specialist oatmeal mill in Co. Kildare. The Irish Times named the same three flour-milling sites when it reported on the company in August 2007, and said Odlums then employed 190 people.

Oats became a bigger part of the business in 1964, when Odlums bought John McCann’s, the Drogheda oatmeal miller whose history went back to a water-powered mill built near the town in 1800. According to the history later published on the McCann’s website, Odlums moved McCann’s production to its own oatmeal mill at Sallins, Co. Kildare, which had been working since 1910, and remodelled that mill in 1995. The same history says McCann’s steel-cut oatmeal had been exported to cities such as New York, Boston and Montreal since the early twentieth century. Odlums made it until 2008, when the American company Sturm Foods acquired the McCann’s brand.

An owl, a cream pack and a resident baker.

The best-known sign of the brand is a bird. Odlums packs carry an owl, which the company today calls “the famous Odlums Owl,” and in 2016 its website said consumers “instantly recognise” the brand by its distinctive cream packaging and its Owl logo. The company’s current website describes the owl on its packs as “a staple in kitchens across the country.”

The core of the range is flour for home baking. The 2016 site named Cream plain flour and self-raising flour as the staples to be found “in kitchen cupboards throughout the country,” alongside a porridge range that ran from Traditional Porridge Oat flakes to a Smooth and Creamy line. Today the company says it also offers gluten-free, spelt and organic products and a wide range of sweet and savoury baking mixes. Odlums also mills flours to order for commercial bakers, English Wikipedia says.

Much of the brand’s voice has come through a person rather than a slogan. The company’s 2016 website introduced Catherine Leyden as Odlums’ resident home-baking expert and said she had been giving consumers simple, easy-to-follow recipes for more than 30 years; the brand’s social feed at the time pointed followers to her Christmas recipes on the breakfast programme Ireland AM. The current website is built around recipes and a free Bake Club, with categories that run from breads, scones and traybakes to air-fryer bakes and occasions such as Pancake Tuesday, Halloween and Christmas. The brand tags its social posts #behindeverybake, has run baking competitions for children and has staged live baking demonstrations at the Tullamore Show in Co. Offaly. In its own words, it does not think baking is “about perfection”; instead, it says, it is “about the joy of getting stuck in and giving it a go.”

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all food and drink names from the Netherlands and Ireland: Calvé, Duyvis, Chocomel, Unox, Odlums, Club Orange and Brennans. Dutch and Irish food and drink brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family firms that still carry a founder’s name to names that now belong to much larger food and drink groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a supermarket shelf.

A food or drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a pack, a name and the meal, snack or drink it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From family mill to a Dublin food group.

Odlums was family owned and managed until 1988, the 2007 company history says. By the mid-2000s it was half-owned by Greencore, the listed Irish food group, and half by Origin Enterprises, a spin-off from the food group IAWS. In August 2007, The Irish Times reported, Origin bought Greencore’s 50% and took full control. Origin already owned the Shamrock Foods and Roma brands, and its chief executive, Tom O’Mahony, called Odlums an “excellent fit” that would complement them.

Three years later Odlums changed hands again, this time through a merger. In September 2010, RTÉ reported, Origin’s branded food business, Origin Foods, which held Odlums, Shamrock and Roma, was combined with the Irish food company Batchelors, known for its beans and peas, to form Valeo Foods Group, with backing from the UK private-equity firm CapVest. Origin kept a 45% stake and CapVest held the remaining 55%; English Wikipedia, citing the Irish Examiner, says CapVest bought Origin out of Valeo in 2015. In May 2021 Bain Capital Private Equity announced it had agreed to buy Valeo from CapVest. Its announcement described Valeo as a company founded in 2010 and headquartered in Dublin, and listed Odlums among its brands alongside Jacob’s, Rowse, Kettle, Barratt and Balconi.

For a design guide, Odlums shows how a cream pack, an owl and a resident baker can keep a milling name from 1845 at the centre of a recipe-led brand. Compare Jacob’s, another Irish name in Valeo’s portfolio, and Brennans, the Irish bread brand. For this guide we use owl brown, flour cream and wheat gold with a classic serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Odlums’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.