Cal-Maine Foods Acquires Creighton Brothers LLC

Cal-Maine Foods announced Monday the acquisition of the shell egg, egg products and prepared foods assets of Creighton Brothers LLC, including Crystal Lake LLC, for approximately $128.5 million.
Creighton Brothers and Crystal Lake are both headquartered in Warsaw.
Cal-Maine, headquartered in Ridgeland, Miss., is the largest egg company in the United States and a leading player in the egg-based food industry, according to their news release. Cal-Maine is funding the acquisition with available cash on hand.
In a telephone interview Monday night, Mindy Truex, president of Creighton Brothers and Crystal Lake, explained the acquisition included Creighton Brothers as far as the poultry production units, those farms and their processing plant; as well as all of Crystal Lake. “It’s the breaking operation. So it’s the egg production and shell, egg and frozen liquid egg processing - the chicken and the eggs.”
Truex continued, “We still, because all the crop ground, property, land is owned by CB Farms, the parent company, we still have that so we’re still in the farming business, and we still have the (Crazy Egg Cafe).”
The news release states the acquired assets include commercial shell egg production and grading with capacity of approximately 3.2 million laying hens, including 500,000 cage-free, and 865,000 pullets, a feed mill, 1,007 acres of land as well as egg products and hard-cooked egg processing facility.
Sherman Miller, president and chief executive officer of Cal-Maine Foods, stated in the news release, “The acquisition of Creighton Brothers and Crystal Lake advances our strategy by expanding the scale and geographic reach of our shell egg platform, across both specialty eggs and conventional eggs, adding meaningful growth to our portfolio. This incremental capacity strengthens our ability to align production with demand, better positioning us to consistently meet consumer expectations for choice, reliability and affordability.
“Together with the Creighton Brothers and Crystal Lake team, we will build on the strong foundation already in place - combining our operational excellence, deep customer relationships, supply chain expertise, rigorous capital deployment and robust systems to accelerate growth and unlock new opportunities,” he said.
Creighton Brothers and Crystal Lake will be fully integrated into Cal-Maine Foods’ existing operations, including its 177 employees, the release states.
“All the employees - except for the cafe and myself and Tracy Nichols - all the rest of the people that work out on the farms, our crops crew, the feed mill crew and the plant employees and things transferred today over to Cal-Maine,” Truex said.
Creighton Brothers was established in 1925 and celebrated its 100th anniversary last year. Truex said the anniversary and the acquisition overlapping over the past year made it bittersweet.
“Roller coaster of emotion over the last 10 months that we’ve been working on this, and it was hard to really fully embrace and get to enjoy the 100th anniversary part of last year because we were also working on this and because Cal-Maine is a publicly traded company we had to keep it kind of very tight-lipped,” Truex said. “None of the family knew except for our board until today. None of the family owners.”
She said she was sure for most of them, like her, “It’s kind of something that sets you back a little bit and I’m the only family left in the every day working activities in the business, so it’s been my whole life. From that part of it, it’s sometimes hard to swallow and hard to talk about.”
The acquisition is the best thing for the employees, Truex said, “and for the farm to be able to continue being what it is in terms of quality poultry farm and quality eggs and egg products going out the door. This was the best option for it for the hopefully next 100 years, and I truly hope, like the quote said, our striving for excellence - I don’t think our men and women will let go of - and the principles of doing things right.
“No matter how tough they are sometimes or it might be expensive or whatever the challenge might be to doing it right, if it’s a challenge, you still do it right,” Truex stated, and that’s what makes a successful, quality, largest egg-producing company out there “want to be a part of it or be it.”
She said Cal-Maine Foods are quality people and, “I feel like it’s one extreme to another with our little company, to go from ... 175 employees and they have thousands of employees, but for Cal-Maine this will be the Creighton Brothers site, so the name, in some way, is maintained, but they have rights to that now, so we will be going forward as Creighton LLC as opposed to Creighton Brothers LLC, so we’re working on that transition now and hoping it’s not too bumpy of a road and we’ll wait and see what the however many years brings.”
Truex said their biggest concern and emphasis with the acquisition was Cal-Maine was able to take all the employees and make sure things continued for the employees as good or better than what they had with Creighton Brothers LLC. Cal-Maine indicated that was not a problem and they understood what Creighton wanted for their employees.
Cal-Maine’s branded portfolio includes Eggland’s Best, Land O’Lakes, Farmhouse Eggs, 4Grain, Sunups, Sunny Meadows, MeadowCreek Foods and Crepini, the release states. Find more out about them on their website at www.calmainefoods.com