History of the Balcells, the family that created the ATO milk brand

In the mid-eighties, it was difficult to spend a day in Catalonia without bumping into the ATO logo at least once. Their milk cartons filled supermarket shelves and a million households kept them in their home pantries. Spectators of the Jean Bouin race, the Volta, or the 24 Hours of Motorcycle Racing at Montjuïc also came across advertising banners. The company was the Catalan leader in the sector: it collected milk from 3,700 farmers, and about 480 people worked at the bottling plant.

But who was behind those three letters? ATO had not been born in the offices of a large multinational food company. Behind it were the Balcells, a family from Barcelona that had started with a small dairy farm and that, generation after generation, had turned that business into one of the country's great dairy companies. Today, ATO is a fully consolidated brand, but it has not been in the hands of the Balcells for decades. After several changes in ownership, since 2008, 60% of Llet ATO has belonged to seven Catalan farmer groups, grouped under Natura Llet, and the remaining 40% is owned by Corporación Alimentaria Peñasanta (CAPSA), the owner of Central Lechera Asturiana. They have an annual turnover of around 30 million euros. Despite the passing of the years, the current owners still claim the brand's origin and the history of the Balcells.

The story begins in 1908. That year, Magí Balcells Malet began raising dairy cows at Can Magí, a farmhouse in the Marina de Sants, the current Marina del Prat Vermell. The business was much simpler back then: simply milking the cows and selling the milk. The business was successful, and over the years, the Balcells also opened a dairy and a small workshop in the heart of Sants.

There, the family managed to have about a dozen cows. But, by mid-century, Barcelona was changing and put the family's business model against the ropes. "There came a moment when the Barcelona City Council said that cows could no longer be kept inside Barcelona," explains Josep Balcells, former general director of ATO and one of the six children of Magí Balcells Civit and Rufina Rabanete, to ARA. His parents then decided to change their strategy. "They began to buy milk from farmers outside the city and focus their efforts on packaging and marketing it," he recalls.

The change of model worked. The Balcells started distributing the bottles to the dairies of Barcelona and, when the first supermarkets began to gain ground, they also made a place for themselves there. “We started with Caprabo, Condis... and we kept growing”, recalls Balcells. At the beginning of the sixties, the workshop in Sants had already become too small for them. For this reason, in 1963 the family decided to return to their origins and move the activity to the Marina, where they still kept land.

The origin of the name ATO

There, the Balcells family built a new bottling plant, but they soon needed to gain more space. “We were buying land: first one plot, then another, then another...”, explains Balcells. They also began to look beyond Barcelona: they opened plants in Girona and Lleida and entered other companies in the sector. The milk, which until then they had marketed under the family surname, began to reach further and further: the small family business entered a new dimension.

In 1970, Josep Balcells assumed the general management and the family decided to give the business its own brand, short and easy to remember. The surname Balcells, he explains, caused them a problem when they wanted to grow outside of Catalonia: “Spanish speakers found it hard to pronounce it –he recalls–. We thought we needed a short, easy, and simple name for everyone to remember”, he adds. That was how three letters appeared that would end up making their fortune: ATO.

Contrary to what many people think, ATO is not an acronym. The name came from an advertising agency that the Balcells had commissioned to find the ideal name to make their milk sell as well outside as it did inside Catalonia. “They presented us with several names and we chose ATO”, recalls Balcells. The agency also assured them that ato meant cow in Greek. For years, Balcells repeated it with conviction, until, while studying at IESE, he met a Greek professor. “He told me that, in Greek, ato didn't mean anything: nor did cow”, he recalls with laughter.

The dangers of growing too fast

In the eighties, ATO accelerated its expansion. The disappearance of some of the competitors it had ahead of it left room to grow and the Balcells took advantage of it: they bought factories in Santander and Gijón, a center in Galicia, a cheese factory in León and even made the leap to the south of France. “We lacked raw materials,” explains Balcells. At the moment of maximum expansion, the group came to have four or five factories and about 1,300 employees. In 1987, ATO even went public, a step that was unusual for family businesses.

But that race also began to strain the seams of the family business. “Perhaps we grew too fast,” admits the former general manager. Furthermore, the business was changing: supermarkets were gaining weight and ATO had gone from collecting practically in cash to having to wait 30 or 60 days to receive payments for sales. In that context, at the beginning of the nineties, the Balcells received an offer from Union Laitière Normande (ULN), a large French cooperative, and decided to sell the company.

The sale put an end to more than eight decades of the Balcells' connection with the milk business, but not to the brand they had created. After passing through several hands, ATO continues to be in Catalan supermarkets today. And Josep Balcells, when he goes out to shop, still stops in the milk carton aisle. “It makes me happy to see the ATO cartons there,” he confesses. “Now I lead a quieter life, but thinking about the time at the head of the company brings me good memories: they were also very beautiful years,” he concludes with a smile.