Dean Foods Company announced that, following a comprehensive sale process and a competitive auction as part of its Chapter 11 process, Dairy Farmers of America has been named the winning bidder to acquire a substantial portion of Dean Foods’ business operations. Pursuant to the agreement, which is subject to final approval by the Bankruptcy Court, DFA will acquire the assets, rights, interests, and properties relating to 44 of the company’s fluid and frozen facilities for $433 million.
In addition, as part of the court-supervised sale process, Dean Foods has designated Prairie Farms Dairy as the winner of the assets, rights, interests, and properties relating to 8 additional facilities, 2 distribution branches and certain other assets for $75 million in cash. Dean Foods has designated Mana Saves McArthur, LLC, and Producers Dairy Foods as winning bidders for the sale of the facilities located in Miami, Florida and Reno, Nevada, respectively. Harmoni, Inc. has been designated as the winning bidder for the Uncle Matt’s business.
“We ran a competitive auction process and are pleased to have reached these agreements, which we believe represent the best path forward for our stakeholders,” said Eric Beringause, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dean Foods. “Dean Foods has strong and long-standing relationships with DFA and Prairie Farms Dairy. We are pleased that through these transactions, substantially all of our processing assets will continue to operate as dairies and will be owned by our dairy farmer partners with the resources, experience, and industry expertise to continue to succeed in the current market environment. We are committed to completing these transactions as quickly as possible, and to ensuring a smooth transition for our customers. I want to thank all Dean Foods employees for their continued commitment to our customers and our company throughout this process. I know we can count on them to continue to deliver the high-quality dairy products our customers rely on as we work to close these transactions.”
The agreements were reached following an auction conducted under the supervision of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. All agreements are subject to court approval and certain other closing conditions. A hearing to seek required court approvals is scheduled for April 3, 2020. Subject to Bankruptcy Court approval, the transactions are expected to close at the end of April 2020.
A list of entities included in each transaction is available on the Dean Foods restructuring website.
