Pringles potato chips in a can ("once you pop you can't stop") moves from P&G in Ohio to Diamond Foods in California primarily for strategic synergy reasons.P&G wants to focus on its core detergents,beauty and hygiene products like Tide,Oil of Olay,Crest toothpaste business. For Diamond Foods it makes sense as they are a snack food company with a large US retail presence in packaged almonds,peanuts under the Emerald brand,that is looking to compete in global growth markets. The sale of Pringles to Diamond Foods for $2.35 B will add a product for Diamond Foods that is sold in 140 countries which means that there is distribution,advertising and marketing in place alongwith a retail shelf presence. It's easier to manufacture a consistent quality Pringles chip anywhere in the world than a potato chip and the can really helps the product for display and transportation compared to bags that tend to get crumpled with crushed chips in some crowded and booming markets like India.
The base method and process for processing potatoes was patented by one Mr. Pringle in 1942 and you can see the US Patent 2,286,644 here.
But it was great development and marketing work by Procter and Gamble since 1968 that really make the "potato crisp" market take off. See a 1976 Procter and Gamble patent for "Ripple Chip Type Product " here US 3956517. Apparently, at the time the potato chip industry was hugely against allowing the product to be called potato chips (hence chip type) because it was not sliced potatoes and meant competing with a product that was of uniform quality compared to potatoes that tend to differ from one another!
The global market for Pringles is huge and it still has a younger demographic in the US. In Asia the flavors are shrimp,crab and seawood mainly for the East and South East Asia and you can expect many more new flavors. The composite material Pringles can should be great for retail distribution and with a line up including Kettle Chips, Diamond Foods should be in great shape to gain retail shelf space in Asia and take the product to new heights.