Vancouver-based Premium announced Friday it will pay a total of $227 million in cash, shares and promissory notes for four companies: Concord Premium Meats, The Meat Factory, Country Prime Meats and Frandon Seafood.

Premium CEO George Paleologou, in the company’s fourth-quarter earnings report on Friday, said the company is “very excited about all of these businesses both on a stand-alone basis as well as the potential synergies between them and our legacy businesses.”

All four firms, he said, have “best-in-class management teams, modern well run facilities, entrepreneurial cultures and, in the cases of Concord and The Meat Factory, leading iconic brands.”

Premium didn’t say what it will pay for each company separately, but noted its deal for Concord Premium Meats is subject to approval from the federal Competition Bureau.

The Competition Bureau calls for advance notice of proposed deals when a target firm’s assets in Canada — or its revenues from sales in or from Canada generated from those assets — are valued above a given threshold, which for 2018 is set at $92 million.

The Concord deal is thus expected to close in the second quarter of this year, pending bureau approval. The deals for The Meat Factory, Country Prime Meats and Frandon are all expected to close in the next two weeks.

Set up in 1993 and based at Vaughan in the Greater Toronto Area, Concord Premium Meats operates federally inspected further-processing plants at Vaughan, Mississauga and Brampton and at St-Eustache, Que.

Concord’s plants make beef, poultry and pork products including deli meats, burgers, roasts, steaks and kabobs, among others, for the retail and foodservice sectors. Its brands include MarcAngelo, Skoulakis, Central Park Deli, Black River Angus and Connie’s Kitchen.

The Meat Factory, or TMF Foods, founded by Lou Albanese, operates a federally inspected 85,000-square foot plant in the Stoney Creek area of Hamilton and makes beef, pork and poultry products under the Lou’s Barbeque and Peameal Bacon of Canada brands.

Country Prime Meats, founded by the Springmann family in 1996, processes pork into various pepperoni meat snacks at Lac la Hache, B.C., about 220 km northwest of Kamloops, selling nationwide and into the U.S.

Frandon, based at St-Laurent, Que., distributes seafood products such as fresh fish, crab, shrimp, lobster, squid, scallops and frozen goods such as beverages, desserts, chicken and appetizers in the Montreal area.

Paleologou, in Friday’s year-end report, said the company “continue(s) to pursue a wide variety of acquisition opportunities and expect(s) 2018 to be our busiest year yet for transactions.”

‘Unexpected headwinds’

Premium on Friday booked full-year earnings of $80.5 million on “record” full-year sales of $2.198 billion for 2017, up from $68.8 million on $1.858 billion in 2016.

Fourth-quarter earnings came in at $17.2 million on $585.4 million in revenues, down from $20 million on $532.6 million in the year-earlier Q4.

“In terms of the fourth quarter, while we continued to generate record sales and adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), our results were below our potential due to certain unexpected headwinds,” Paleologou said.

“In particular, very tight labour markets across North America created unusual operating challenges for many of our businesses as well as those of our supply chain partners. These challenges included higher employee turnover rates and in some cases labour shortages.”

Premium, which operates plants and distribution centres in seven provinces and seven U.S. states, is “confident that we are taking all of the necessary steps needed to adjust to this new environment,” he said. — AGCanada.com Network

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The Vancouver company announced Thursday it has bought Skilcor Food Products of Brampton, just over a week after closing a deal for Leadbetter Foods of Orillia. Financial terms of both deals weren’t disclosed.

Leadbetter, which books annual sales of about $55 million, is billed as one of Ontario’s leading manufacturers of specialty bacon, fresh and frozen burgers, portion-cut steaks and chops and sausages at two plants in Orillia, including a 47,000-square foot bacon plant custom-built in 2012.

Skilcor, meanwhile, reports annual sales of about $27 million and is billed as one of Canada’s leading manufacturers of cooked back ribs and other products, including barbecued chicken and meatballs, out of a 34,000-square foot plant built in 2006.

Premium’s CEO George Paleologou on Sept. 19 described the deal for Leadbetter as the company’s “next step towards our objective of building a leading specialty protein platform in Ontario.”

Leadbetter sells retail products under the Leadbetters and Leadbetters Cowboy brands, and foodservice products under the Great Canadian Burger and Sunshine City brands.

Leadbetter, Paleologou said, complements Premium’s Belmont Meats burger business, which it bought in October last year, and “will also help with the launch of our Centennial business’ Ontario operations.”

Centennial, a foodservice meat processor which Premium bought in 2007 with operations across Western Canada, is expected to open a new 105,000-square foot, $14 million custom cutting and distribution plant in the Toronto area at the end of this year, Paleologou said.

The Skilcor deal, meanwhile, “will not only expand our portfolio of products but will also give us specialized production capacity that will enable us to provide customers with premium quality differentiated protein solutions in the high-growth ready-to-eat product category,” he said.

Skilcor markets its products under the Cobblestone Farms brand and also custom-makes fully-cooked ribs for private-label clients.

Premium, formerly known as Fletcher’s Fine Foods, markets its products under brands including Harvest, Grimm’s, Freybe, Hygaard, Quality Fast Foods, Hempler’s, Made-Rite, Creekside, Stuyver’s and Piller’s, among others.

Premium’s other acquisitions in the past 12 months have included Diana’s Seafood and Belmont Meats, both of Toronto, along with British Columbia processors Island City Baking, Conte Foods and Larosa Fine Foods. — AGCanada.com Network

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Premium Brands, which owns assorted processing and distribution businesses across Western Canada, Ontario and the U.S., on Thursday announced it has paid $50 million – $49.2 million in cash and $800,000 in Premium common shares — for all of Belmont’s shares.

Premium CEO George Paleologou said the company “expect(s) to generate significant synergies between Belmont’s business, our burger operations in Western Canada and our Centennial Foodservice business’ recently announced initiative to expand into the Ontario market.”

Also, he said, “Belmont’s strong management team significantly enhances our bench strength in the Ontario market.”

Belmont, whose recent annual sales have run around $120 million, is considered a leading manufacturer of burger patties in Canada, making customized premium burgers for clients including retail chains, club stores, quick-service and casual dining restaurants and foodservice distributors.

Belmont, which also supplies individually-portioned steaks, short ribs and other beef products for various customers, is now introducing its product lines into U.S. retail markets, Premium noted in Thursday’s release.

In business in Toronto since 1966, Belmont in 2013 was the subject of a recall and federal food safety investigation after 11 people were found to be sickened by E. coli O157:H7, “reported to be related” to consuming Compliments brand Super 8 beef burgers produced at the plant.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency wrapped that investigation in November 2013, having found “no food safety concerns… during (its) investigation at either Belmont Meats or their meat suppliers that could identify potential sources of the contamination.”

Belmont, the agency said at the time, is “currently working to address other administrative, non-food safety related issues of non-compliance within accepted timelines.”

When the company marked its 50th anniversary in May this year, it made note of its “commitment to food safety” noting each phase of production is “carefully monitored and protected using advanced safety technology, ensuring customers and their brands receive the highest degree of safety at every step.”

Belmont at the time said it “also insists its partners and suppliers exceed its robust food safety approvals, remain current in their own safety initiatives and comply with all regulatory certifications.”

Premium, formerly known as Fletcher’s Fine Foods, has continued on a steady path of expansion by acquisition, most recently buying the separate Fletcher’s U.S. business in August and Montreal-based C+C Packing in March. — AGCanada.com Network

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Premium Brands, which rebranded in 2000 and sold its U.S.-based Fletcher’s Fine Foods bacon and sausage business to Sofina Foods, announced Monday it will buy the Fletcher’s U.S. business and assets for US$5 million.

The deal calls for a Premium Brands U.S. subsidiary, Hempler Foods, to take over the Fletcher’s business and production equipment and consolidate the Fletcher’s operations at other Premium Brands plants in the U.S., including plants at Ferndale and Kent, Washington.

The Fletcher’s building at Algona, Wash., east of Tacoma, is not part of the deal.

Under Markham, Ont.-based Sofina’s ownership, the Fletcher’s brand appears on smokies, bacon, breakfast sausages, dinner hams and deli meats.

The deal “brings together three of the U.S. Pacific Northwest’s most iconic specialty packaged meat brands, namely Hempler’s, Fletcher’s, and Isernio’s, which we acquired just last year,” Premium Brands CEO George Paleologou said in a release Monday.

All three brands, he said, “are known for their authentic, top-quality, specialty products and their long histories of community engagement and charitable giving.”

Premium Brands said Monday it expects to close the deal next month. — AGCanada.com Network

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Premium Brands last Tuesday announced a $146 million cash-and-stock deal to buy C+C and its in-house processing arm Premier Meat Packers. The company supplies fresh and frozen meats to grocery chains, the hotel and restaurant sector and further-processors across central and Eastern Canada and the northeastern U.S.

The C+C business, which books about $250 million in annual sales, “perfectly complements our protein distribution and trading initiatives in Western Canada,” Premium Brands CEO George Paleologou said in a release.

The family-owned company’s management and “state-of-the-art” facilities “will enable us to create a unique national platform in another niche market segment,” he said.

The price tag for the deal will be $102 million in cash, 514,579 newly-issued Premium Brands common shares and consideration of up to $20 million based on “certain post-acquisition earnings targets.”

C+C, started by businessman Stanley Cons in Troy, N.Y. in 1974, moved its main base of operations to custom-built facilities in Montreal after outgrowing its New York space.

As Premium’s third major investment in Quebec, C+C is expected to “further diversify our customer base, expand our presence in Quebec and the Maritimes, and add to our product portfolio,” Paleologou said.

The deal would put C+C in a stable of food manufacturing and distribution and wholesale businesses with operations in six provinces and three U.S. states, with brands including Grimm’s, Harvest, McSweeney’s, Hempler’s, Piller’s and Freybe.

“It was very important to us to find a partner that could not only help us elevate our business to the next level but one that also shares our values,” and Premium is that partner, C+C chief operating officer Michael Cons said in Premium’s release.

C+C bills itself as able to source container loads of top-quality beef, pork, lamb, veal and poultry directly from packers in Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Denmark and Uruguay, and able to find other meats, such as bison, ostrich and horse, for its clients when needs be.

The deal, subject to federal Competition Bureau approval and other conditions, is expected to close on or around April 15, Premium Brands said. — AGCanada.com Network

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