Olam Food Ingredients buys US spice producer Olde Thompson

Olam Food Ingredients (OFI) has agreed to acquire US private label spices and seasonings manufacturer, Olde Thompson, for an enterprise value of $950 million.

The deal will see OFI’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Olam Holdings, acquire the US spice group from private equity firm Kainos Capital and Olde Thompson’s management shareholders.

Olde Thompson became a part of Kainos Capital’s portfolio in May 2018 and acquired Gel Spice last year, in a deal which Kainos Capital says enabled it to expand its product offering into pouches, extracts and single serve seasonings for meal kits and other applications.

Established in 1944, Olde Thompson is a manufacturer and supplier of private label and branded spices, seasonings, baking ingredients and spice-related housewares in North America. The company operates bi-coastal facilities in Bayonne, New Jersey and Oxnard, California, and distributes its packaged products to retail customers across the club, mass, grocery and discount channels.

The transaction will see OFI accelerate its growth strategy, transform its spices business – a growing part of its ingredient’s portfolio – and expand its private label capabilities.

“Our global origination and sustainable spice supply chain along with Olde Thompson’s expertise in private label is going to be truly complementary and transformative for our spices business,” said Greg Estep, CEO of OFI’s spices business.

“We can now deliver greater value to our customers by combining Olde Thompson’s reach and capabilities in blending, product formulation and packaging to our seed and field management programmes, ingredient processing capabilities and the differentiated transparency and traceability that our AtSource platform delivers.” The acquisition is expected to generate potential EBITDA synergies of $25-30 million.

A Shekhar, CEO of Olam Food Ingredients, said: “This transaction builds on our long 15-year partnership with Olde Thompson and is a logical move to combine our ‘back-end’ strengths in global origination and sustainable supply chains, with Olde Thompson’s ‘front-end’ capabilities in providing retail spice solutions to many major US retailers.”

CEO of Olde Thompson, David Sugarman, added: “The acquisition of Olde Thompson by OFI is a terrific outcome for all of our key stakeholders. For our customers, this partnership pushes Olde Thompson to the forefront of sustainable innovation as it provides access to OFI’s extraordinary international sourcing capabilities and spice expertise that will allow us to provide a new level of traceability and transparency to the marketplace.”

The transaction is expected to be completed in Q2 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.