Post Holdings to Buy Majority ESOP-Owned Almark Foods

Post Holdings Inc., the Brentwood, MO based consumer packaged goods company, plans to expand its egg business with the purchase of another egg products producer.

Post has agreed to acquire Gainesville, Georgia-based Almark Foods, which is majority owned by an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The deal, for which terms weren't disclosed, is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.

Post said it will combine Almark with its existing Michael Foods egg business, and split Almark's financial results between Post's foodservice and refrigerated retail segments, officials said Monday.

Almark Foods said its plants in Yuma, Arizona, and New Market, Tennessee, which produce hard-boiled and deviled egg products, are included in the deal. Almark offers conventional, organic and cage-free products distributed to retail outlets as well as foodservice distributors.

Davis, California-based private equity firm AGR Partners in June 2016 made a "significant growth capital investment" in Almark. The egg producer went on to invest $27.5 million to buy 17 acres and build a 120,000-square-foot plant in Yuma that opened in 2018.

"Almark Foods grew the retail hard-boiled egg business into a category leader and we are pleased that Michael Foods will be able to take this business to the next level," Rick Anderson, Almark's CEO, said in a statement.

Almark's Artisan Kitchens division, which makes cooked egg products including egg bites and omelets at a plant in South Carolina, is not being acquired as part of the transaction with Post, and will remain ESOP-owned, according to Anderson.

In 2018, Post invested $85 million to build an egg processing facility in Norwalk, Iowa, for its Minnesota-based Michael Foods business.

Post Holdings Inc. (NYSE: POST). led by President and CEO Rob Vitale, is a consumer packaged goods holding company whose brands include cereals Honey Bunches of Oats, Malt-O-Meal and Weetabix; and refrigerated foods under the Bob Evans, Simply Potatoes and Crystal Farms brands. For its fiscal 2020 fourth quarter ended Sept. 30, Post reported net earnings of $57 million on net sales of $1.4 billion, compared with a net loss of $61 million on net sales of $1.4 billion in the year-ago quarter.

As excerpted from the St. Louis Business Journal.