NEW YORK -- Kellogg Co. is hoping Pringles will satisfy its craving for a salty snack.
The food giant is best known for its lineup of sweet breakfast items. But on Wednesday, it became the world's second-biggest savory snack maker behind PepsiCo Inc.'s Frito-Lay with a $2.7 billion deal to buy the potato snack brand from Procter & Gamble.
The addition of Pringles bolsters Kellogg's cupboard of salty snacks such as Cheez-It and Keebler's Club crackers. It also positions the company to expand at a time when the appetite for on-the-go foods is growing worldwide, particularly in emerging markets such as China and India.
"When you have people moving to the cities and becoming urbanized, they're less likely to eat foods they grow themselves," said Tom Graves, an analyst for Standard & Poor's who follows Kellogg. "There's a bigger opportunity to sell packaged foods."
In the past year, sales of snack foods rose 3.3 percent to $16.6 billion, according to Nielsen. That's on top of a 1.8 percent growth the previous year.
Kellogg, which gets most of its revenue from North America, is looking for Pringles to help it expand into a global snacking company. Pringles, known for its tube packaging, is sold in more than 150 countries and gets two-thirds of its $1.5 billion in annual revenue from overseas.
For Cincinnati-based Proctor & Gamble, it's the end of an era. Pringles was the last of P&G's food businesses.
P&G wanted to sell Pringles to focus on its core household and consumer goods products.
Kellogg was able to swoop in to buy Pringles from P&G after Diamond Foods Inc.'s proposed $1.5 billion acquisition of the brand fell through.
Kellogg expects to complete the Pringles acquisition during the summer, possibly on June 30.
The snack, which was first tested in 1968, was packaged in cans to preserve freshness and prevent them from breaking like other chips do. The chips are made from dough that contains just 42 percent dried potatoes. And they're fried, not baked.
Kellogg stock rose $2.57 a share to close at $52.87 Wednesday. Proctor & Gamble closed 7 cents higher at 64.55 a share.
First Published February 16, 2012, 5:00 a.m.