Today’s post, complimentary to yesterday’s article about the swift demise off starlet gourmet-food-delivery businesses, begs the question, ‘What the heck is going on now?’
This time around, the BIG DEAL breakdown is about two of Industrial Ag’s YUGE show-horse high-flying fresh vegetable operations.
Danone’s mega mega ‘Earthbound Farms’ and Campbell’s ‘Bolthouse Farms’ (https://nypost.com/…/campbell-struggling-to-find-bolthouse…/) – among the BIGGEST vegetable operations in the entire world, are in BIG trouble, unable to make money in today’s predatory economy.
Despite EVERY conceivable conventional-wisdom benefit from EVERY consolidation-generated economy-of-scale, these monstrous giants CAN NOT TURN A PROFIT and are striking out seducing the pool of leary buyers.
Are fire sales ahead? Will Industrial Ag retrenchments deflate the painful price-depressing pressure now plaguing family farms? JIm
“France-based yogurt seller Danone has been trying since June to sell Earthbound Farms, a 47,000-acre organic vegetable and lettuce farm in California, according to a source.
“Earthbound went from generating $70 million in Ebitda a few years ago to having negative Ebitda now, the source said. ‘It is losing money and getting little interest,’ a source close to the JPMorgan-run auction said.
WhiteWave Foods in 2013 paid $600 million for Earthbound, and then Danone in 2017 bought WhiteWave for $12.5 billion.”
