Elsie the Cow Has New Product to Push : Sales: Pasta’s growing appeal as a healthy, trendy food has made Borden step up efforts to manufacture and market it. The product may soon represent 10% of its sales.

It’s probably not the best-known fact in supermarket circles, but Borden Inc. is fast becoming to pasta what Anheuser-Busch is to beer.

In the last five years, the company that’s better known for Elsie the cow has nearly quadrupled its worldwide pasta sales to an estimated $800 million in 1991.

Borden holds 34% of the national pasta market, has the country’s only true national brand with Creamette and doesn’t appear to be reaching a comfort zone.

Earlier this month, the New York-based company continued an all-out effort to satisfy the public’s growing appetite for pasta by opening a $50-million automated facility in St. Louis capable of producing 250 million pounds of pasta a year.

That’s 3,500 feet per second, or 51,000 miles per day. In 11 days of production, the plant’s output could stretch to the moon and back, says Operations Manager Alfonso Gioia III.

If that’s not enough, there’s additional space at the plant to double output, said John Westerberg, Borden’s president of North American pasta products operations. That would be twice as many elbows, shells, twists, bow ties, nuggets, manicotti, angel hair. . . .

“It’s like any business,” said Westerberg, 70, who’s known in the business as Mr. Pasta. “You sell enough of it, and you get a little here and a little there and you do pretty well.

“Borden is committed to this business, and we’re really the only ones.”

Borden is probably better known to shoppers for Borden ice cream, Wise potato chips, Elmer’s glue, ReaLemon juice, Wyler’s bouillon and Cracker Jack. The company made $364 million last year on $7.6 billion in sales.

It got into the pasta business 12 years ago when it bought Creamette, said spokesman Nick Iammartino. Over the years, Borden put a dozen more pasta companies in its grocery cart and rolled out the Creamette brand nationally, alongside a number of regional brands that include Prince in the East, Luxury in Texas and Anthony’s in Southern California.

Meanwhile Borden divested some of its dairy businesses, mostly fluid milk operations in the East, Southeast and north central states, Iammartino said. It expects its dairy segment to contribute 23% of this year’s anticipated sales of $7.4 billion, down from 24% last year.

But pasta will grow to 10.8% of total sales this year from 9.7% last year.

Borden expects its pasta sales to increase nearly 8% this year, as the company capitalizes on Americans’ growing awareness of pasta as a health food.

“At one time, it was known to be a cheap food, only something you served to your family,” said Westerberg, who even eats pasta for breakfast, mixing it with eggs, bacon bits and parmesan cheese. “Now your trendiest restaurants in the country serve pasta.”

“Everything about pasta is outstanding,” said Anthony D’Amato, Borden’s president and chief executive. “It’s convenient, inexpensive and good for you.”

Borden’s efforts seem to have secured a strong place for the company in the pasta business. In fact, Borden and Hershey Foods of Hershey, Pa., have pulled away from the competition in a category that could soon reach about $1.3 billion in annual sales in the United States.

Hershey holds about 29% of the market. Mueller’s of Englewood Cliffs, N.J., is third with 11%.