As Del Monte Foods Co. executives gather today at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco for their annual shareholders meeting, the talk will be about promoting its household-name brands and shoring up profits against a backdrop of soaring fuel and packaging costs.

Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette CEO Rick Wolford, of Del Monte Foods Co., stands next to a window overlooking the Heinz facilities on the North Side in this file photo. Click photo for larger image.

But many in Pittsburgh will be listening to hear if the discussion in part turns toward the future of the San Francisco-based company's local operations that employ some 600 on the North Side.

Though Del Monte has declined comment on reports it may sell the baby food and private label soup brands made at the facilities, Chairman Rick Wolford last week sounded a lot like the H.J. Heinz Co. executives who sold the divisions to him. At a Bank of America investment conference in San Francisco, he said Del Monte's new strategy would focus on higher margin, higher growth lines and would simplify the overall business.

Those comments would not appear to bode well for the soup and the Nature's Goodness infant foods businesses acquired from Heinz in 2002. Divesting both of the businesses would be a logical move, according to more than one analyst.

BB&T Capital Markets analyst Heather L. Jones wrote in a report last month that slipping profit margins in soup made that division a good candidate for a sale, while Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Thomas Morabito believes that the company may be running up against the difficulties of getting its baby food onto enough store shelves in a market controlled by dominant player Gerber.

"You can't mess with Gerber," he said. Speculation on possible buyers for the lines ranges from Ralcorp Holdings, which has purchased a string of private label products, to Dean Foods specialty foods spin-off TreeHouse Foods, to private equity investment groups.

The other two major business lines acquired from Heinz -- pet foods and StarKist tuna -- also are proving problematic for their new owner. So much so that BB&T's Jones thinks Del Monte also should consider selling its pet business.

She noted that the entire pet foods arena is vulnerable to intense competition, which keeps prices down for consumers but profits down for the companies.

For example, when Del Monte rolled out a version of its Kibbles 'n Bits dog food that looked a lot like people food, Mars and Nestle immediately made similar products.

To become a bigger player in pet food, Jones said the company probably needs to buy some more lines but that might be expensive. Indeed, at the Bank of America gathering, Wolford said Del Monte had looked at buying the Meow Mix cat food line years ago but decided it didn't make sense at the time. Now, he said, it would fit well but probably would be too costly.

If the pet food business is a challenge, so is tuna.

For one thing, the entire U.S. tuna industry is facing a lawsuit from the California attorney general's office seeking to force it to put warning labels on the product because of mercury content -- a move it fears will drive down sales. Not surprisingly, the industry last month hailed a statement by the Food and Drug Administration that the suit might hurt fish consumption.

While Del Monte, Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea might be on the same side in that case, they are fierce competitors in the grocery stores. Consumers are in the habit of looking for the canned tuna on sale rather than staying loyal to one brand.

It's been a problem for years and not one that's easily solved, said Edgar J. Johnson, who ran the StarKist operation for Heinz in the late 1990s and now runs an Ohio investment group, Matrix Capital Partners.

"Basically we can rent share for a week," he said, referring to the ability to cut prices to grab more consumers and market share. But such a strategy quickly collapses as competitors adjust prices to gain share back. And if one company tries to stay above the fray, the others may just move lower and grab market share again.

Wolford is seeking to get off the low-price treadmill.

He's hoping to persuade packaged tuna, food and vegetable competitors to stop undercutting each other and buy into the idea that innovation, differentiation and brand loyalty will give consumers reasons to pay more. "At some point, you'd think other people would like to make money," Wolford told the analysts in San Francisco.

Making money, after all, is what it's all about, and Del Monte has not been doing it as well in recent years as many would like.

The company's shares also have been languishing in the $10 to $11 range, around where they traded in 2002 when Del Monte added the former Heinz businesses to its core canned fruits and vegetables.

Officials blame some of their issues on the soaring costs of fuel and packaging, and analysts are willing to buy that to a certain extent. Just last week, analysts for Credit Suisse First Boston dropped earnings estimates for at least eight food companies because of concern over such costs.

But in the view of Timothy Ramey, an analyst at D.A. Davidson, in Lake Oswego, Ore., Del Monte has been coming up with excuses a bit too long. The company needs to get serious about improving its results, he said.

An effort to do that drove the company's rollout of a new "Project Brand" strategy earlier this summer, in which officials said they could make more money by selling cool, new products under their best known names. Just last week, Del Monte introduced ready-to-serve grilled StarKist Tuna Fillets in a pouch and soon expects to launch Garden Select diced tomatoes that it promises taste much fresher than existing products.

As the work to build the brands continues, so does work on the new Del Monte regional headquarters building between the North Shore stadiums.

As early as next January, the company plans to consolidate about 600 administrative workers now scattered in several buildings on the North Side, some of which are still labeled with the historic Heinz name, at the new offices.

Even the branding work has begun there, too. Along the top of two sides of the structure sit two tall letter D's.