House Foods America Corp., a Garden Grove-based manufacturer of tofu, noodles and other Asian-influenced food products that’s seen a surge in business the last decade, has bought an office next to its headquarters for what looks to be a potential expansion of its local operations.
An affiliate of the company, a unit of House Foods Corp. in Japan, recently completed the purchase of 7421 Orangewood Ave., a roughly 83,000-square-foot building in a business park at the intersection of Orangewood and Western Avenue, about a mile north of the San Diego (405) Freeway.
The two-story building sold for about $17.5 million, or $212 per square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
The office was sold by a private investor from Newport Beach who paid about $12 million for the building in 2013, records show.
The office is currently used by Garden Grove-based Southland Industries, an engineering, construction, service, and energy service firm that has its headquarters nearby.
There’s been no announcement of Southland vacating the Orangewood facility or House Foods moving into the office building. The buyer last week declined to comment on the transaction.
Likewise, there’s been no disclosure of the real estate transaction in the financial statements of the parent company, whose stock is traded on the Tokyo stock market and has a market value of about $3 billion.
House Foods America also owns its main headquarters and manufacturing facility next-door to the just-bought Orangewood Avenue office; that building is nearly 130,000 square feet.
The headquarters building was billed at the time of its 1997 opening as America’s largest tofu factory, producing more than 100,000 containers of tofu a day and employing roughly 150 workers.
The company’s U.S. business began in 1983; prior to Garden Grove it had been operating in Los Angeles.
The company said on its website that it now manufactures more than 275,000 pieces of tofu, also known as bean curd, per day; it also operates a plant in New Jersey.
The company has made sizable investments in its local facilities in recent years.
In 2010, it installed a 215KW photovoltaic solar electric system at the existing headquarters and manufacturing property.
The improvements to the property cut carbon dioxide emissions by 675,000 pounds per year, which is the equivalent of planting 6,000 trees, according to the company’s website.
30% Market Share
The latest real estate buy comes during a period of strong growth in the domestic tofu market, not to mention for the Garden Grove firm’s own operations.
Tofu sales in the U.S. have been growing in the past few years, thanks to increased interest in Asian-American foods, and are now about $274 million per year, according to the most recent data from trade group Soyfoods Association of North America.
That would place the company’s market share in the U.S. at nearly 30%, based on a reading of House Foods Corp.’s latest financial reports.
The parent company said its tofu-related sales in the U.S. totaled nearly $84 million last year, up from $80 million the prior year.
Sales in the U.S. have nearly doubled since the recession, according to a reading of the Osaka-based company’s latest financial statements.
House Foods Corp. is aiming for a nearly 5% increase in tofu sales in the U.S. this year to $89 million due to “increasing health consciousness” in the U.S., as well as new soybean-related product development.
The company is one of two notable tofu makers in Orange County, along with Fullerton-based Pulmuone USA Inc., a unit of a Korean food manufacturer whose local operations are run out of a nearly 90,000-square-foot building.
In addition to its tofu and tofu shirataki noodles, House Foods Corp. has a Mexican food business line that operates in the region, thanks to its 2012 buy of El Burrito Mexican Food Products Inc., a leading “healthy” Mexican food brand that operates out of City of Industry.
A Torrance-based unit of House Foods Corp. also operates a small chain of curry restaurants in the Western U.S., including locations at Irvine’s Diamond Jamboree shopping center.
