Philippines-based meat and seafood group Century Pacific Food is the stalking-horse bidder in an auction for the assets of Atlantic Natural Foods, the US plant-based business.
Atlantic Natural Foods, which makes Loma Linda ready meals and Tuno tuna alternatives, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the US on 7 April.
Last week, a bankruptcy court in Louisiana approved a bidding process for Atlantic Natural Foods and designated Century Pacific as the stalking horse bidder.
Atlantic Natural Foods has entered into an asset-purchase agreement with Century Pacific that includes all brands.
“It is an open process and we are proceeding to a bid process and there are other interested parties,” Douglas Hines, Atlantic Natural Foods’ chairman and general partner, told Just Food.
In December, Atlantic Natural Foods revealed it had ended a relationship with Canada-headquartered Above Food and planned to return to private ownership. The company said it then accelerated efforts to restructuring its supply chain, moves it said had started in January last year.
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By GlobalDataAmid the uncertainty on tariffs and faced with higher input and labour costs, Atlantic Natural Foods started moving production to Century Pacific. Atlantic Natural Foods’ own production in North Carolina ended in March this year.
Products including Big Frank vegan hot dogs and Loma Linda vegan scallops are sold to 15 countries, with their principal market Seven Day Adventist consumers in North America.
“Century had infrastructure, great internal capabilities and the desire to build a generational business model which ensures the supply of food to the key community which the business is built upon,” Hines said.
In a statement issued on Thursday (26 June), Hines added: “During this period, Atlantic Natural Foods experienced rapid cost escalation with material impact directly related to tariffs on steel, grains, spices, along with egg whites and more.
“The restructuring of government tariffs, inflation, price pressures from government and others, labour, insurance, coupled with cybersecurity attacks which have created IT cost to increase three times which showed no relief on the near horizon.”
Atlantic Natural Foods said “challenges in the supply chain and a critical business environment proved too great,” forcing the closure of operations and prompting a swift restructuring. “There is simply too much uncertainty right now,” Hines said.
According to the bankruptcy filing, Atlantic Natural Foods reported assets of $10-50m and liabilities of $1-10m.
