Abbott: From a Chicago Kitchen to Similac, Ensure and a 2022 Crisis

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By Marc Phu · Cosmetics Product Development & Ingredients · Published 26 Jun 2026

Abbott Laboratories began in 1888 in the kitchen of a Chicago physician, Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott, who started manufacturing alkaloid pills from his own home. Nearly a century and a half later, Abbott’s nutrition business, home to Similac, Ensure, Pedialyte and Glucerna, accounts for roughly 22% of the company’s total 2024 revenue, built on a 1964 acquisition that brought infant formula into a company that started as a small-scale pharmaceutical operation.

This profile looks at how a kitchen-table pharmaceutical business grew into a diversified healthcare company with a major nutrition division, how a single 1964 acquisition reshaped that division’s identity for six decades afterward, and what the company’s public handling of a serious 2022 manufacturing crisis can teach other manufacturers about transparency during a genuine quality failure.

Screenshot of the Abbott official corporate website — Abbott’s official corporate website, abbott.com.

Key takeaways

Abbott was founded in 1888 by Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott, who began manufacturing alkaloid pills from his own Chicago kitchen.
The company’s nutrition business, including Similac, Ensure, Pedialyte and Glucerna, accounts for approximately 22% of Abbott’s 2024 revenue.
Abbott’s infant and adult nutrition business traces largely to its 1964 acquisition of M & R Dietetic Laboratories, maker of Similac, which became the foundation of its Ross Products Division.
In 2022, Abbott faced a serious quality and regulatory crisis at its Sturgis, Michigan infant formula plant, leading to a consent decree with the FDA and a nationwide formula shortage.
The company’s public handling of the Sturgis crisis, including a direct rebuttal of a critical investigative report, is a useful case study in manufacturer crisis communication under real regulatory and public scrutiny.

From a Chicago kitchen to a diversified healthcare company

Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott began manufacturing alkaloid pills from his own kitchen in Chicago in 1888, a genuinely small-scale, almost artisanal starting point for a company that would eventually become a global, diversified healthcare business spanning pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices and nutritional products. That range, discovering, developing, manufacturing and marketing across four genuinely distinct healthcare categories, reflects decades of deliberate diversification well beyond Abbott’s original pharmaceutical focus.

Headquartered today in Abbott Park, Illinois, the company’s growth from a single physician’s home-based pill-making operation into this diversified structure illustrates how far a company can travel from its founding category, provided each expansion is built on genuine technical or commercial capability rather than pursued as an unrelated distraction.

The 1964 acquisition that defined the nutrition business

Abbott’s current nutrition business owes much of its identity to a single 1964 acquisition: M & R Dietetic Laboratories, the maker of Similac infant formula. Over the following decades, what became Abbott’s Ross Products Division built out from that original acquisition into the company’s broader infant and adult nutritional products business, eventually encompassing Ensure adult nutrition shakes, Pedialyte oral rehydration products, and Glucerna diabetes-focused nutrition, alongside Similac itself.

This is a clear example of a single well-chosen acquisition becoming the foundation for an entire subsequent business division, rather than remaining a standalone product line. For a company evaluating a potential acquisition in an adjacent category, Abbott’s nutrition division illustrates how much a single deal, if it brings genuine category expertise and brand equity rather than just a product, can compound over many decades.

Manufacturing across a global network

Abbott operates nutrition manufacturing facilities across multiple countries, including its Sturgis, Michigan plant handling powder and liquid infant formula alongside medical food and human milk fortifier operations, and its Casa Grande, Arizona facility producing adult nutrition products including Ensure and Glucerna in reclosable bottle formats. Internationally, the company also operates facilities such as its Hangzhou, China plant, reflecting a genuinely global production footprint supporting nutrition products across different regional markets.

Abbott manufacturing factory entrance in Hangzhou, China — Entrance to an Abbott manufacturing facility in Hangzhou, China.

The 2022 Sturgis crisis: a genuine case study in manufacturer transparency

In 2022, Abbott’s Sturgis, Michigan infant formula plant became the centre of a serious public health and regulatory crisis, following contamination concerns that led to a recall and, ultimately, a consent decree with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration establishing a formal pathway to reopen the facility. The episode contributed to a nationwide infant formula shortage, drawing intense media, regulatory and parental scrutiny to a single manufacturing site.

Notably, Abbott’s newsroom subsequently published a direct, named rebuttal to a critical investigative report about the Sturgis facility, choosing public engagement with specific criticism rather than remaining silent. Whatever view one takes of the underlying facts, that willingness to respond publicly and specifically to critical coverage, rather than issuing only a generic statement, is a genuinely useful reference point for how a manufacturer might handle serious public scrutiny following a real quality failure.

What the Sturgis episode illustrates for manufacturers generally

The Sturgis crisis illustrates a risk inherent in concentrated manufacturing for safety-critical categories like infant formula: when a single facility handling a significant share of national supply for a specific product experiences a serious quality failure, the resulting shortage can have consequences far beyond the manufacturer’s own business, extending to genuine public health impact for infants dependent on that formula.

For any manufacturer producing safety-critical products at concentrated scale, this is a reminder that supply redundancy across multiple facilities, and rigorous, consistently enforced quality systems at each one, carry stakes considerably higher than ordinary consumer product categories where a quality lapse mainly affects brand reputation rather than public health directly.

Lessons for OEM and private label brands

Several elements of Abbott’s history apply at a smaller scale. A single, well-chosen acquisition in an adjacent category, if it brings genuine capability and brand equity rather than just a product line, can become the foundation for an entire subsequent business division over enough time. Diversifying into genuinely different categories works best when each expansion is built on real technical or commercial capability, not just capital availability. And when a serious quality failure does occur, direct and specific public engagement with the resulting criticism tends to be a more credible response than a generic statement alone.

None of these require Abbott’s global scale. A smaller brand evaluating whether to acquire an established product line to enter a new category, or thinking through how it would communicate publicly if a genuine quality issue occurred, is working through the same underlying questions Abbott has faced at various points in its history.

Where the company stands today

Abbott remains a diversified global healthcare company headquartered in Abbott Park, Illinois, with its nutrition business, anchored by Similac, Ensure, Pedialyte and Glucerna, accounting for roughly 22% of 2024 revenue. Its manufacturing network spans multiple countries, and the company continues to operate under increased regulatory attention to its infant formula production following the 2022 Sturgis crisis.

Diversification built on genuine capability, not just capital

Abbott’s expansion from pharmaceuticals into diagnostics, medical devices and nutrition was not a random spread of unrelated bets funded purely by available capital. Each expansion built on genuine underlying capability relevant to healthcare broadly, whether biochemical formulation expertise, clinical testing infrastructure, or manufacturing quality systems suited to regulated products, rather than diversifying into entirely unrelated consumer categories simply because the company had capital available to deploy.

This distinction, expanding into adjacent categories that share real underlying capability versus diversifying purely opportunistically, is a genuinely important one for any company with the resources to enter new markets. Abbott’s sustained success across four distinct healthcare categories over more than a century suggests the discipline of staying within a coherent broader domain, healthcare in this case, while still expanding into genuinely different specific categories, is a durable growth strategy.

Frequently asked questions

When was Abbott founded and by whom?

Abbott was founded in 1888 by Dr. Wallace Calvin Abbott, a Chicago physician who began manufacturing alkaloid pills from his own kitchen.

How did Abbott enter the infant formula business?

Through its 1964 acquisition of M & R Dietetic Laboratories, the maker of Similac, which became the foundation of Abbott’s Ross Products Division and its broader nutrition business.

What happened at Abbott’s Sturgis, Michigan plant in 2022?

The facility faced a contamination-related recall and quality crisis that led to a consent decree with the FDA and contributed to a nationwide infant formula shortage.

What can a manufacturer learn from how Abbott handled the Sturgis crisis?

That direct, specific public engagement with serious criticism, rather than a generic statement alone, is a more credible response following a genuine quality failure.