Bimbo Bakery of Mexico has a deal to buy Canada Bread for
$1.85 billion, which means Maple Leaf Foods, which owns 90 per cent of the
shares will get $1.65 billion.
"This transaction maximizes the value of
our investment in Canada Bread and focuses Maple Leaf on building its
leadership in the consumer packaged meats business," said Michael H.
McCain, president and chief executive officer.
"Grupo Bimbo is an excellent company with
strong values and a global leadership position, with little overlap in our
geographic markets.
“This makes for a highly complementary fit with
our bakery operations and is expected to provide exciting opportunities for
Canada Bread employees, customers and other business partners."
Maple Leaf will now concentrate on its
meat-processing business which is nearing completion of a major set of
investments.
It is opening a huge meat-processing plant at
Hamilton that will consolidate operations from a number of smaller and older
facilities, mainly the J.M. Schneider plant in Kitchener and plants in the
Toronto area.
The company has already opened a new
distribution centre at Highways 401 and 6 south of Guelph.
Bimbo Bakery, which has offices in Cambridge,
gains the most modern bakery in Canada, finished a few years ago on a Hamilton
site close to the new meat-processing facility.
That bakery was built to consolidate operations
from a number of older and smaller facilities, most of them in the Toronto
area.
