Campbell’s maintains a large presence in North Carolina

North Carolina is an important state for The Campbell’s Company of Camden, N.J., one of the leading U.S. food and beverage manufacturing companies. Its annual revenues exceed $10.25 billion.

In 1978, Campbell’s announced that it would construct a massive soup manufacturing plant in Robeson County near Maxton.

 

The story has historical significance. The Campbell’s factory was built on a 670-acre site that was once part of Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base.

 

According to NCPedia, the military post was a vital installation during World War II for developing airborne operations and training glider pilots to fly the CG-4A, the most widely used American military troop and cargo glider of the war. The base was active from 1942-45. At its peak, 10,000 soldiers were stationed here.

 

Army Maj. Gen. William C. Lee, who was known as the “Father of the Airborne” for his leadership in organizing Army airborne units, was responsible for construction of the base in his home state. (He was a native of Dunn, N.C., in Harnett County.)

 

During World War II, glider units operated with paratroop, infantry, artillery, engineer and medical units. Each glider could carry 13 soldiers and their equipment. Pilots who were trained at Laurinburg-Maxton participated in the invasions of Sicily and Italy in mid-1943 and in the airborne landings on June 6, 1944, in Normandy, France.

The primary airplanes used to tow the gliders at Laurinburg-Maxton Army Air Base during World War II were the Douglas C-47 Skytrain (shown above) and the Curtiss C-46 Commando (shown below).

  

The Laurinburg-Maxton base was deactivated in October 1945. The towns of Laurinburg (in Scotland County) and Maxton took over management of the airfield, which continues to operate two runways to serve general aviation customers.

The rest of the former air base was ripe for economic development – with plenty of flat land, rail infrastructure and easy access to major highways. Additionally, the site offered abundant underground water tables and direct access to the Lumber River, vital for the high-volume water needs of a soup and broth plant.

Campbell’s benefited from state and local incentives, customized training programs and a dedicated, skilled workforce.

The $100 million project to build the sprawling 1.2 million-square-foot facility, known as Campbell’s Maxton plant, created about 1,000 new jobs. The first can of soup in Maxton was produced on June 8, 1982.

Interestingly, there is only one community in the entire United States named Maxton, and Campbell’s has put it on the world map.

Maxton’s historic Town Hall, once serving as a bank and later a laundry, was meticulously renovated in 1997 to house municipal offices.

The first European settlers came to this area from Scotland in the 1700s. A community formed at Shoe Hill Creek and the Lumber River and was incorporated in 1874 as Shoe Hill. 

It was later named Quhele (pronounced as “Kwayl”…rhymes with “jail”), in honor of a Highland Scottish clan.

That didn’t last long. The name of the village was changed back to Shoe Hill in 1881 and finally named Maxton in 1887. Maxton was chosen to honor the immigrants who came from the Scottish Borders region of southeastern Scotland. 

The lands and barony of Maxton lie in the County of Roxburghshire on the northern banks of the famed River Tweed.

 

Campbell’s and Maxton were in the news just recently, as the company dedicated a major addition to the Maxton plant in mid-June 2026.

The expansion project added 88,000 square feet of manufacturing space with another 28,000 square feet of utility mezzanine space, while creating about 100 jobs. 

This will boost the Maxton plant employee group to about 1,250 people who are working at the 2.2 million-square-foot facility.

The facility makes products that carry the Swanson, Pacific Foods, Campbell’s, Campbell’s Chunky, Campbell’s Homestyle and SpaghettiO’s labels.

 

Brothers Jason and Travis Kelce have been brand ambassadors who have appeared in television commercials for Chunky Soup.

The Maxton plant produces roughly 8.2 million cans/cartons per day. This is 110 to 115 truckloads per day, or a truckload every 12 minutes.

Campbell’s Soup diversifies through acquisitions

Early acquisitions by Campbell’s Soup of Camden, N.J., have had dramatically different outcomes.

First, in 1915, the company purchased Franco-American Food Company, which was established in 1886 in Jersey City, N.J., by Alphonse Biardot. He had immigrated to the United States from France in 1880. At the time, Franco-American’s primary products were French soups and assorted gravies.

 

Franco-American had a loyal following of consumers who enjoyed canned products like Spaghetti and Meat Balls, SpaghettiOs, RavioliOs and Macaroni and Cheese, but in 2004, Campbell’s decided “to retire” the Franco-American brand. 

It folded SpaghettiOs and the gravies under the Campbell’s umbrella. Macaroni and Cheese was unceremoniously dropped from the lineup.

 

The primary celebrity spokesperson for the Franco-American brand in the late 1950s was actress June Lockhart, who promoted Macaroni and Cheese in television commercials.

 

Jimmie Rodgers, the pop singer known for “Honeycomb,” originally sang the famous “Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs” jingle when the canned pasta rings were introduced in 1965. 

He adapted the tune from his recording of “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958). The jingle went: “The neat round spaghetti you can eat with a spoon...Uh-oh, SpaghettiOs!”

Singer/songwriter Barry Manilow wrote a number of top-flight advertising jingles, including “Who Can? Franco Ameri-Can” in 1974 for Franco-American Spaghetti with Meatballs. It concludes: “Spaghetti that’s long on fun, to the last one – Franco-Ameri-Can!”

 

Campbell Soup’s second acquisition saw the company purchase the V8 Vegetable Juice brand in 1948. 

The deal included V8’s manufacturing facility in Napoleon, Ohio (about 45 miles southwest of Toledo).

 

The beverage was first concocted during the Great Depression (1933) by entrepreneur William Gilbert Peacock in the basement of his home in Evanston, Ill. Peacock was hoping to invent an affordable and healthy drink that would provide people with essential nutrients from an assortment of hand-blended vegetable juices.

The story is reported by Dr. Neil Gale, editor of The Digital Research Library of Illinois. 

He said Peacock brought in Frank Constable of Chicago to help him arrive at the proper formula. Tomato juice originally accounted for about 87% of the content, but seven other vegetables were also included in the mix.

They were beets, carrots, celery, lettuce, parsley, spinach and watercress, along with spices, such as dill. The precise formula remains a carefully guarded secret.

 

The name V8 was selected by Peacock and Constable to align the product with the power of a V8 automotive engine…to get your motor running.

 

Since 1948, Campbell’s has invested heavily in the V8 product line. Some of the entertainment industry heavyweights who pitched V8 products were: Ann Sheridan, Shirley Temple, Fred MacMurray, Dorothy Lamour, Rhonda Fleming and Ronald Reagan.

 

Today, Campbell’s Napolean, Ohio, manufacturing facility, with more than 2 million square feet of floor space, produces way more than just V8 – it accounts for more than one-third of all Campbell’s soups and other products in the company’s “meals group” and two-thirds of all its “beverages.”

A giant replica of a red and white Campbell’s Tomato Soup can is situated outside the plant. It stands 33 feet tall and contains 200,000 gallons of water for the warehouse sprinkler system.

 

Local officials say it would take 2,178,645 regular-sized cans (10.75 ounces) of Campbell’s Tomato Soup to fill the tank.

The site also contains a massive 23,040-panel solar field, a city-sized wastewater treatment plant and a biodigestor that converts fruit and vegetable waste into methane gas to fuel the plant’s generators.

 

Campbell’s employs about 1,300 people at its Napoleon plant, making the company, by far, the largest employer in the region. (Napoleon’s population is 8.635.)

The community was settled along the Maumee River in 1832 and is named after French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Campbell’s Soup celebrates life of Dorcas Bates Reilly

July 22, 2026, is a red-letter day in the history of Campbell’s Soup, as the company observes the 100-year anniversary of the birth of Dorcas Lillian Bates Reilly.

 

She was the homemaking wizard who invented the classic “green bean casserole” recipe in 1955, using Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom condensed soup.

 

Around the Campbell’s Test Kitchen in Camden, N.J., Dorcas Reilly was known as the “Grandmother of the Green Bean Bake.”

 

The recipe uses only six ingredients: canned or fresh green beans, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, soy sauce, black pepper, milk and French-fried onions. 

The company says that today, green bean casseroles appear on more than half of all Thanksgiving tables in America.

The original recipe has earned a place of honor in the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame in Akron, Ohio.

Cream of Mushroom is one of “Campbell’s Big Three” that account for the bulk of sales. Cream of Mushroom remains as the top choice as a “cooking soup.” 

Tomato is the all-time best seller with Chicken Noodle close behind. These two varieties are known widely as America’s “comfort food cure-alls.”

Dorcas Lillian Bates was born in Woodbury, N.J., on July 22, 1926. She earned a bachelor’s degree in home economics in 1947 from Drexel Institute of Technology (Drexel University) in Philadelphia, Pa., and became one of the first full-time employees in Campbell’s Test Kitchen in 1949.

As a recipe developer, she created hundreds of different recipes, including Campbell’s tomato soup meatloaf, a tuna-noodle casserole, types of porcupine meatballs (ground beef and rice) and the Sloppy Joe “souperburger.”

 

Dorcas Bates married her high school sweetheart Thomas H. Reilly in 1959. She took a leave of absence from Campbell’s to raise her family but returned in 1981 as manager of the test kitchen. She retired from the company in 1988. Dorcas Reilly died in 2018 at age 92.

 

Campbell’s Soup cans have been identified by the classic red and white packaging wrappers since 1898. 

The dynamic color scheme “struck” Campbell’s executive Herberton L. Williams while he was attending an Ivy League college football game at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

The visiting team, Cornell University of Ithaca, N.Y., donned snappy uniforms – red jerseys and white britches. 

Williams felt red and white labels would make Campbell’s soup products “easily identifiable.” 

A central medallion featured a double-headed eagle.

In 1900, Campbell’s Soup was awarded a bronze medal for product excellence at the Paris Exposition in France. That was a big deal, because more than 50 nations participated. The eight-month event attracted more than 76,000 exhibitors to showcase their achievements, inventions and cultures. Essentially a world’s fair, the expo drew 51 million visitors.

The 2.5-inch diameter medal was designed by Jules-Clément Chaplain, a sculptor and official medalist of the French government.

The obverse (or front) side of the medal featured a profile of Marianne, the national symbol of the French Republic, wearing a Phrygian cap and oak branches, with the Paris skyline visible in the background.  

 

The reverse (or back) side contained the winged Victory, holding a laurel wreath and palm branch in her right hand. A triumphant male athlete, seated on Victory’s back, holds a torch in his left hand. Below Victory is a depiction of the Grand Palais, which housed the fine art exhibition at the expo.

 

Because the 1900 Summer Olympic Games were held concurrently with the expo, the International Olympic Committee authorized Chaplain’s medals to serve as the prizes for the Olympians as well

Campbell’s management decided to use the reverse view of this prestigious international award “to validate the quality of its condensed soups to the American public.”