Strawberry producer SGF Produce Holdings LLC in Placentia has been acquired by San Mateo-based buyout firm Paine & Partners LLC on undisclosed terms.
SGF operates through its Sunrise Growers~Frozsun Foods Inc. subsidiary, which produces more than “130 million pounds of processed strawberry and other fruit products annually,” according to Sun Capital Partners Inc., a Boca Raton, Fla.-based private equity firm that sold its stake in the company.
Sun Capital typically invests in companies that have $50 million to $5 billion in revenue. It invested a reported $32.5 million in Sunrise Growers in 2008.
Executives from Sunrise Growers were not available for comment last week. The privately held company does not disclose financial data.
New owner Paine & Partners said Chief Executive Edward Haft and others on the senior management team will continue to lead the company.
Sunrise Growers markets various products under its own brand and makes private-label lines for restaurants and grocers, a customer base that includes McDonald’s Corp., Costco Wholesale Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated the strawberry “grower price” at 82.9 cents per pound in its latest report. That would put Sunrise Growers’ value of production at more than $100 million.
Sunrise Growers started more than 40 years ago when large tracts of land still were used by strawberry growers in Placentia and other cities in North and Central Orange County.
The company now handles administrative work from its headquarters, while it operates processing plants in Oxnard and Santa Maria, areas that combined for more than 21,000 acres of strawberry fields as of 2011. That accounted for about 57% of the acreage for strawberry production in California, according to data from the California Strawberry Commission.
Sunrise Growers said the company’s workers plant about 25,000 strawberry plants per acre.
