Irish convenience food producer Greencore Group has announced it will acquire US-based Marketfare Foods for £22.6 million.
Marketfare, which is headquartered in Arizona, is a leading manufacturer of food-to-go products for convenience and small stores in the US. Its principal customer is 7-Eleven, with whom it has partnered for over 20 years.
Marketfare is the largest single supplier of Fresh to Go and 7-Smartstore-branded sandwiches, servicing over 1,100 7-Eleven stores in the Mid-Atlantic region. Marketfare is also an exclusive manufacturer of Casa Buena Cheese and Chili sauces for the entire 7-Eleven chain in the US and Canada.
For the year ending 27 January 2012, Marketfare reported revenues of $65 million (£40.9 million) and EBITDA was $5.7 million (£3.6 million).
Commenting on the acquisition, Patrick Coveney, chief executive officer of Greencore, said: “The acquisition of Marketfare represents an excellent opportunity for us to further develop our food to go business in the US, building on the successful acquisition of On a Roll in December 2010. It builds additional scale with 7-Eleven, provides new competencies for us in the fast growing food to go category and extends our geographic footprint principally along the Eastern seaboard.
“The new product capability and geographic expansion provide the opportunity to expand further with our existing customers; the Acquisition represents the next step in our strategy to build a business of real scale in the US.”
Headquartered in Dublin, Greencore has 20 convenience foods manufacturing sites in the UK and the US and employs in the region of 11,000 people. The Convenience Foods Division consists of seven manufacturing category businesses comprising 16 sites in the UK and four in the US.
