Hearthside Food Solutions acquires Oak State Products

Hearthside Food Solutions has acquired Oak State Products, a privately held contract manufacturer of cookies, bars and other baked foods located in Wenona, Illinois.

This deal enables Hearthside to immediately boost its baking capacity to meet the growing demand for food contract manufacturing.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With the addition of Oak State's production plant, Hearthside now has 24 facilities.

Before the acquisition, Hearthside had 20 production facilities in the US and three in Europe.

Hearthside founder and chairman Rich Scalise said: “Oak State represents an opportunity to add instant capacity to our network.

"Their flexible production lines complement our existing large scale lines, creating additional options for our customers.

“We see synergies in operations, cultures and customers. Most importantly, Oak State is already a mature, well-run operation. We anticipate a smooth and rapid integration.”

Hearthside senior vice president of supply chain Dwayne Hughes said: “This is a functioning operation with an active customer base. It would take two years or more to accomplish this with a greenfield option.

“Instead, we can immediately focus on bringing the facility up to our world-class manufacturing standards, implementing our HPS continuous improvement system and SAP platform.”

Hearthside is a leading contract manufacturer of bars and baked goods in North America and a producer of functional bars in the EU.