Northeast distributor Dora’s Naturals is out of the High-Pressure Processing business as the company has sold its HPP assets to Universal Pure Holdings LLC, a cold chain food safety solutions provider.
Universal Pure is the largest independent HPP provider in North America and, with this latest purchase, now operates 22 machines with locations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, according to a press release.
The sale includes all assets and equipment, as well as customer contracts meaning Dora’s current HPP customers will be able to continue services with Universal Pure.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“We are very excited to welcome and continue the tradition of high-quality service to Dora’s HPP customers,” said Universal Pure CEO Frank Jimenez in a press release. “We are also eager to enhance our HPP capacity within the Northeast region of the United States.”
The deal also marks a clean break from HPP services for Dora’s Naturals, which added the division around seven years ago amid a spike in demand.
Reached by BevNET, Dora’s Naturals CEO Cyrus Schwartz said the company had not originally been looking to divest its HPP arm, but ultimately agreed it would be beneficial for its core distribution and third-party logistics businesses after Universal Pure approached the company with an offer to buy its equipment.
The deal arrives shortly after Schwartz sold another business he operated for several decades, Mountainside Farms, he said.
“That frees up financial capital, the HPP business frees up space at our facilities, and maybe most importantly, focus for me and my senior managers, to really focus on growing our core business of 3PL logistics and primarily our distribution business,” Schwartz said.
“You’ll see we’ll just be expanding our customer base and expanding our brand partner base pretty quickly, I think, over the next year or two,” he added.
While Schwartz said that the HPP business was unlikely to see the boom in growth that occurred when Dora’s first extended into the sector – amid a spike in cold-pressed juice sales that has since simmered down – he noted that the space is still growing with juice shots, dips and heightened awareness of food safety needs in the meat industry.
“I don’t think we’re going to see explosive growth, which we saw eight years ago,” he said. “I think that it will continue to be a healthy category, HPP processing, and it’s going to be a mix of co-packers and third party processors like Universal and large companies.”