Maple Leaf Foods has closed its acquisition of Cericola Farms
The facilities are located in Bradford, Ontario and Drummondville, Quebec and have a collectively process approximately 32 million kg of chicken annually.
The company says that this acquisition provides it additional supply and value-added processing capability to advance its leadership in higher value categories.
The transaction was financed from a combination of cash-on-hand and drawings under the existing credit facility. The acquisition is expected to be accretive to Maple Leaf's earnings in 2018.
Maple Leaf has also secured 100% of the processed chicken volume from Cericola's primary processing plant located in Schomberg, Ontario, and holds an option to acquire this asset and associated plant supply in three years.
Cericola specializes in air-chilled processing of antibiotic free and animal by-product free ("AABF") and organic poultry products.
Maple Leaf Foods has transitioned most of its flagship Maple Leaf Prime chicken brand to Prime RWA, where the Canadian market is growing at approximately 25% annually. Chicken is the most consumed and fastest growing meat protein segment in North America.
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