Now the Italian government is having to intervene to rescue a household name from threatened disintegration after discovery of a massive black hole in its funds - while its once inspirational creator is spending the new year in the cells of a Milan remand centre on fraud charges.
In 2002 Parmalat, maker of dairy products, biscuits and fruit juices, had sales of 57.5 billion euros (71.87 billion dollars). It employs more than 36,000 people, with 139 production plants in 30 countries.
Four thousand staff are in Italy and more than 70 percent of sales are in Europe, North and Central America.
Now its failure seems set to become the biggest financial fraud case in European history. It is being likened to US energy trader Enron and telecommunications company WorldCom, likewise embroiled in massive fraud scandals.
Parmalat took its name from the great northern city of Parma, home of the eponymous ham and site of the EU's new Food Safety Agency.
Now the citizens of that ancient borough are in shock over the news of their famous son Calisto Tanzi and what might happen to their great brand name. Not to speak of their soccer club which he also made great.
For 65-year-old Tanzi, founder and former chief executive of the group based near Parma, has reportedly admitted embezzling about 500 million euros (630 million dollars) from the company.
Meanwhile investigators are also trying to trace a total of up to 13 billion euros said to be missing from the accounts.
Tanzi's father ran a cured meats and canned tomato sauce company. When he died, Calisto took over the family firm and switched to production of pasteurised milk, setting up a company called Dietalat in 1961.
At a time when local dairy companies monopolised distribution of fresh milk, Tanzi began expanding production quickly to other cities including Genoa, Florence and Rome, exploiting the latest conservation and marketing techniques.
The company used ultra-high-temperature (UHT) processing to allow milk to be transported and stored without refrigeration. In 1963 the company introduced Tetra Pak's carton packaging.
More recently, micro-filtration has proved a market success since its introduction in late 2001.
The company was initially listed on the stock market in 1990, with the Tanzi family retaining majority control through a holding company called Coloniale Spa.
Turnover in 2002 was nearly 7.6 billion euros and net profits 252.1 million euros.
Turnover for the first half of last year dipped to 3.426 billion compared to 3.857 billion for the same period in 2002, and operating profits were 270 million euros compared to 297 million.
Europe takes the lion's share of operating profits at 38.5 percent, then comes North and Central America with 33.2 percent, South America (18.4 percent), while the rest of the world makes up 9.9 percent.
More than half the business - 57 percent - is still in milk. The rest includes cheese, yoghurt, ice and butter accounting for 23 percent, followed by vegetable base (eight percent), biscuits and other products accounting for 12 percent.
Parmalat became a sports patron in the 1970s to among others the world Alpine skiing championship and Formula One Racing drivers Niki Lauda of Austria and Brazil's Nelson Piquet.
Tanzi's son, Stefano, is president of Parma football club, 98-percent owned by Parmalat, which has risen from a small provincial team to a leading name in European football since the Tanzi family took over in 1991.
The group's total official debt on June 30 was 5.34 million euros, but the real hole now discovered in the accounts is estimated by investigators to be of the order of seven to 13 billion euros.
Parmalat was declared insolvent on December 27 and placed under the control of the industry ministry in Rome.
Part of the Italian fraud squad's investigations is focusing on the banking operations of Parmatour, a travel agency belonging to the family and run by a Tanzi daughter, Francesca.
Tanzi is reported to have admitted he masterminded the embezzlement of some 500 million euros over seven or eight years, saying he used the money to keep afloat the failing Parmatour.
Calisto Tanzi, charged with "criminal association with the aim of fraudulent bankruptcy," was long considered close to the Christian Democratic Party which for decades had a dominating role in Italian post-war politics until its demise in the early 1990s.
He later became one of the financial supporters of Forza Italia, the party of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi which dominates the government coalition in Rome.
The collapse of Parmalat has scandalised the Italian business world, causing payment problems for some milk producers in Italy and France, sparking repercussions as far away as Nicaragua where the group is the biggest milk producer, and undermining the finances of the Parma football club.