Utz Brands has announced its subsidiary Utz Quality Foods has paid Evans Food Group (“Benestar”) and its related affiliates approximately $38.4 million to acquire a brand-new, recently completed snack food manufacturing facility in Kings Mountain, N.C.
The facility contains state-of-the-art, high-speed pork rind manufacturing lines and will enable multi-line production across Utz’s key sub-categories. The 125,000-sq-ft building can be expanded to 200,000 sq ft, and is expected to add more than 115 local jobs.
Utz will convert the space into a fully operational snack food manufacturing facility later this year to support the increased and growing demand for its brands in the Southeast, Northeast, and Mid-South regions. Benestar will supply pork pellets from its Chicago operations to Utz.
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“With continued growth and excitement for our snack food brands, we are very excited to expand our roots in North Carolina, where we will be adding over 115 new jobs over time,” says Cary Devore, chief operating officer of Utz Brands. “This is a strong step forward in optimizing our plant and logistics network, and it will allow us to insource manufacturing across several product types that we currently outsource to some degree. This transaction increases our operational flexibility and will contribute to higher long-term margins over time, based on identifiable, multi-faceted cost synergies.”
“As a vertically integrated manufacturer, we believe our operations will be optimized by supplying Utz with our Chicago-based pellet production, while selling the downstream manufacturing operations to Utz. This type of partnership will only enhance operations of both companies going forward,” states Bruce Myers, president of Benestar.
