Houlihan Lokey Advises First Choice Ingredients

Houlihan Lokey's Consumer, Food & Retail Group is pleased to announce that First Choice Ingredients, Inc. (First Choice Ingredients) has been acquired by DSM for $453 million. The transaction closed on October 18, 2021.

First Choice Ingredients is headquartered in Germantown, Wisconsin, USA, with three manufacturing facilities in the vicinity and has approximately 100 employees. The company has built a leading position in the U.S. taste market as a developer of clean label, fermented dairy, and dairy-based savory flavorings for taste and functional solutions across a wide range of applications. The company ferments and blends a variety of natural dairy products with cultures and enzymes to create clean label taste solutions integrating sensory and functional benefits. First Choice Ingredients leverages R&D and application expertise to work as an innovation partner with food producers, flavor houses, and foodservice suppliers in applications such as soups, snacks, salad dressings and sauces, prepared meals, and sweet baking as well as dairy products and plant-based meat and dairy alternatives.

Royal DSM is a global, purpose-led, science-based company active in nutrition, health, and sustainable living. DSM’s purpose is to create brighter lives for all. DSM addresses with its products and solutions some of the world’s biggest challenges while simultaneously creating economic, environmental, and societal value for all its stakeholders—customers, employees, shareholders, and society at large. DSM delivers innovative solutions for human nutrition, animal nutrition, personal care and aroma, medical devices, green products and applications, and new mobility and connectivity. DSM and its associated companies deliver annual net sales of about €10 billion with approximately 23,000 employees. The company was founded in 1902 and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam.

Houlihan Lokey is serving as the financial advisor to First Choice Ingredients and assisted in structuring and negotiating the transaction on its behalf.