Ireland-based private-label group Greencore has moved to expand its business in the US with the acquisition of food-to-go supplier Lettieri’s.
Greencore said Lettieri’s manufacturers products including breakfast sandwiches, stuffed baguettes and wrap dogs for sale in US convenience stores.
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Lettieri’s, which is based in Minnesota, generated revenue of US$36.4m and “attributable EBITDA” of $4.7m in the 12 months to the end of March 2013, Greencore said. The US firm operates from a site in Shakopee and employs around 130 staff.
Greencore announced the acquisition, struck for an undisclosed sum, alongside plans to invest around $10m in its plant in Jacksonville in Florida to make frozen food-to-go products.
“We have been working since 2011 to build a focused, growing, food to go business in the US,” Greencore CEO Patrick Coveney said. “Today’s announcement represents an important further step on that journey. Both the Lettieri’s acquisition and the capital investment into Jacksonville deepen our manufacturing capability and widen our product range to more fully serve the food to go needs of our customers in the small store channels.”
Greencore first entered the US in 2008. In early 2012, the company warned its US business was potentially under review if its performance did not improve. Greencore decided to exit its Cincinnati test facility following the termination of the lease. It also quit production of WeightWatchers ready meals.
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By GlobalDataThe company shifted to a “tighter food-to-go proposition” through customers like 7-Eleven and, more recently, Starbucks.
Click here for an interview with Patrick Coveney, published in November, on Greencore’s US business.
