Mesirow Financial purchase Olam processing facility in US for $110.3m

Mesirow Financial has agreed to purchase the real estate assets Olam West Coast’s US onion and garlic processing facility for $110.3m.

Olam West Coast is a wholly owned subsidiary of Olam International and its facility is based in Gilroy, California.

Olam Spices managing director and CEO Greg Estep said: “We are pleased to have secured a long-term tiered revenue-sharing agreement with Mesirow Financial for operating the onion and garlic assets for our US Spices business.

“As a large, leading financial services firm in the US, Mesirow has been a long-term partner of many large corporations in real estate transactions so I am confident our partnership will go a long way towards creating value for our respective stakeholders.

“I am excited about our next phase of growth as we can now redeploy part of the capital released for investments in product innovation and value-added services to create further value for our customers.”

The deal is expected to be completed by the end of next month.

Olam has also entered a tiered revenue-sharing arrangement with the investment management firm, under which the company will share a portion of the annual revenue from operating the assets for 25 years.

Mesirow Financial Sale-Leaseback Capital Division senior managing director Garry Cohen said: “We are very excited about the prospect of closing this transformative acquisition with Olam on one of its most strategic assets in the US.”

Olam is also carrying out discussions for selling or restructuring its assets and certain businesses as part of its strategic plan.