Houlihan Lokey Advises Amelia Bay

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Amelia Bay, LLC, has been acquired by Florida Food Products (FFP), a portfolio company of MidOcean Partners. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The deal closed on August 7, 2020.

Amelia Bay was founded in 1989 with a goal to develop new manufacturing technology to capture the true essence and taste of brewed tea and coffee. Today, the company is an industry leader for industrial-scale brewed tea, coffee, and botanicals that truly reflect the key ingredients and compounds they contain. Amelia Bay's flavor chemists and R&D staff have created a number of well-known brands in the marketplace today.

FFP is a leader in clean-label food and beverage ingredient solutions. With a mission to “improve the food we eat by producing real ingredients from nature that work,” the firm has delivered a multitude of clean-label solutions through its vast manufacturing capabilities, including extraction, fermentation, drying, and blending. FFP's latest innovations include VegStable®Plus, a natural phosphate alternative for the meat industry, and a line of fermented vegetable juices that provides novel flavor and taste-enhancement delivery to a wide variety of end applications—most notably, plant-based foods.

MidOcean Partners, a premier middle-market private equity firm focused on the business services and consumer sectors, is the controlling shareholder of FFP.

This deal represents another successful transaction for Houlihan Lokey in the food and beverage industry.