The Vancouver food processing firm formerly known as Fletcher’s Fine Foods is set to buy back the namesake brand it sold in 2004.
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.
Read Also
Klassen: Western Canadian calf markets surge on New World screwworm fears
For the week ending July 12, Western Canadian yearling markets traded steady to $5 higher compared to seven days earlier. Calves weighing 550-800 pounds were quoted $5 lower to as much as $10 higher.
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
