Woodland Foods has received a majority investment from Graham Partners
Woodland Foods
Woodland Foods is a provider of global plant-based ingredients, including herbs and spices, rice and grains and other specialty food products. Woodland Foods serves a diverse customer base across the foodservice, industrial, retail and e-commerce channels. It maintains a strong network of hundreds of suppliers globally and is a key partner to its customers, leveraging its in-house research and development, value-added processing, quality assurance and a range of packaging capabilities.
The Deal
David and Diana Moore founded Woodland Foods over 30 years ago and have built the business into a leader in the plant-based ingredients sector. They engaged Lincoln to find a partner that could help support Woodland Foods with its next phase of growth. Lincoln crafted a tailored process, including both strategic and financial investors. Woodland Foods ultimately chose to partner with Graham, who has recent, relevant experience with investments in Mercer Foods and Giraffe Foods, strong operational capabilities and a deep bench of resources in that space. Woodland Foods will leverage these industry resources, in addition to Graham’s operational expertise and commercial knowledge to accelerate growth post-acquisition.
Our Perspective
The plant-based and specialty ingredient categories are seeing tremendous investor interest right now. These categories are benefiting from the “mainstreaming” of numerous mega-trends, including clean-label; better-for-you; the globalization of flavors; experiential dining; and convenient, step-saving solutions in meal preparation. Investors’ interest in Woodland Foods was strong and reinforced by several key factors, including a strong management team with a track record of impressive financial performance; the company’s diversity across channels, customers and products; its long-standing customer relationships with meaningful recurring revenue; and its compelling opportunities for future growth. Aaron Goldstein, Managing Director in Lincoln’s Consumer Group, commented, “We are thrilled to have achieved a fantastic outcome for the entire Woodland Foods team and would like to congratulate Graham Partners, who has the experience and resources to support Woodland Foods as it continues its strong growth trajectory. We look forward to watching Woodland Foods grow over the coming years.”
From the very beginning of the process until closing, Lincoln showed exemplary advice, communication, preparation and execution. I am thankful we selected the team at Lincoln and consider that decision key to finding the right partner and achieving an exceptional outcome.
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Any information or testimonials contained in this post may not be representative of the experience of other clients and is no guarantee of future performance or success.