FDBusiness.com

The Irish Dairy Board has strengthened its presence in the US with the acquisition of Thiel Cheese & Ingredients for an undisclosed sum. Thiel is a well established and leading cheese ingredients solutions company based in Hilbert, Wisconsin. With annual sales of about $50 million, the company custom formulates and produces cheese-based ingredient solutions primarily for sale to US-based food manufacturers. Thiel operates from modern state-of-the-art facilities in Hilbert and employs 66 people all of whom will remain with the company.

The acquisition complements and strengthens the IDB’s existing added value cheese ingredients business in the US. Thiel is an excellent fit as part of the IDB’s North American ingredients growth strategy. The acquisition will help to achieve greater scale in the value added cheese ingredients market, add new customer relationships, and provides further technology, innovation and new product applications for IDB.

The acquisition is being funded through IDB’s existing debt facilities. The business is being acquired on a debt free basis.

“We are excited about this strategic acquisition in the USA, which will transform our value added cheese ingredients business. It is an excellent and complementary fit to our existing growing USA ingredients business,” commentsKevin Lane, chief executive of IDB. “The acquisition of a profitable and well established company accelerates our growth strategy in line with our five year plans and our commitment to reinvest the divested funds into core high growth dairy businesses. This acquisition is inline with our strategic objectives of building routes to market and routes to value for dairy products.”