Canada’s Premium Brands Buys Artisanal Bread and Pasta Maker for $20m

02 Dec 2016 --- Canada’s Premium Brands is buying a company that makes fresh and frozen artisanal bread and its affiliate pasta maker for $20.3m. Premium Brands is buying Island City Baking and Conte Foods.Canada’s Island City Baking, founded in 1990, makes fresh and frozen artisan breads and services retail and foodservice customers. Conte Foods, which was founded in 1993, is a Canadian distributor of a variety of specialty food products including items imported from various parts of Europe and fresh pasta.

The two companies have combined sales of around $20m.

In a separate deal, Premium also announced an agreement to buy Larosa Fine Foods, a Vancouver-based manufacturer of specialty Italian products, for $700,000.

"We are very pleased to welcome Carmelo De Luca, president of Island City, An Nguyen, Senior VP Operations of Island City and the rest of their team to Premium Brands,” said George Paleologou, president and CEO of Premium Brands.

“Both Island City and Conte Foods have built strong reputations for manufacturing great high quality products and providing exceptional service to their customers. Furthermore, the dynamic and entrepreneurial cultures that Carmelo and An have developed at Island City and Conte Foods make these businesses a perfect fit with Premium Brands.”

“We are very excited about the opportunities that will result from the merger of Conte Foods and Lasosa,” said Mr. Paleologou.

“The new combined business, which will be under the leadership of Carmelo De Luca, will position us well in a fast growing, niche segment of the specialty food space. Furthermore, we expect to accelerate its growth by enabling it to leverage Premium Brands’ resources including our extensive sales and marketing infrastructure in Canada and the U.S.”

Premium Brands owns a range of specialty food manufacturing and differentiated food distribution businesses with operations in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, Nevada, Ohio, Arizona and Washington State.