Former Hershey CEO may buy Ferrara Candy through private company

By Jean Lotus Staff reporter

Ferrara Candy Co.’s factory in Forest Park (Chronicle Media)

Ferrara Candy Co., the last large-scale candy manufacturing company in Cook County, may be on the auction block for a private sale, multiple sources reported.

The New York Post and other sources reported David West, Hershey Foods CEO between 2007 and 2011, had offered up to $1.5 billion for the company.

West’s company, Conyers Park Acquisition, raised more than $400 million last year to buy a consumer food company, the Post reported.

Ferrara Candy, makers of Gummy Bears, Atomic Red Hots, Lemon Heads and  Boston Baked Beans was sold to Greenwich, Conn.-based L Catterton, formerly Catterton Partners, in 2012. The company merged with Round Lake-Minn.-based Farley’s & Sathers, makers of jujubes and Chuckles. Brach’s, another formerly Chicago-based company, was purchased by Farley’s & Sathers in 2007.

Ferrara’s Illinois presence includes corporate offices in Oak Brook Terrace, a 700,000-square-foot Barrington distribution facility, a Maywood research and development center and two manufacturing plants in Bellwood and Forest Park. The company employs 344 Illinois workers, and has invested $165 million in facilities, according to a March 2016 article in Crain’s Chicago Business.

Ferrara Candy has kept Illinois candy workers employed when other candy companies have moved operations to Mexico, where Cuban sugar can be purchased at a lower international price. Ferrara also has two Mexican factories, according to Crain’s.  The company was found to have used temporary staffing labor at the Forest Park factory, after they settled a $1 million employment discrimination lawsuit in 2014 filed by African-American workers who said they were passed over for staffing factory work in favor of Latinos.

Ferrara Pan Candy began as a family business on Taylor Street, making sugar-coated almonds in Chicago in 1908. Ferrara Pan moved its headquarters to a Borden Milk factory in Forest Park in the late 1950s. After the death of Nello Ferrara, Nello’s son, Salvatore (Sal) Ferrara II, served briefly as CEO of the new Ferrara Candy Co. before stepping down. He died of cancer in 2014 at age 63. During his time at the family business under his father, Sal was credited for taking the company from $3 million to $350 million in value, according to an article in Candy Industry magazine.

The company added new products (including a line of organic Gummy Bears) and pumped millions into marketing in the past two years, CEO Todd Siwak told Crain’s in March. Ferrara closed a distribution center in Chattanooga, Tenn. and factories in Round Lake and Winona, Minn.  The company sought to “double sales to $2 billion in four years,” Siwak said.

The sale of Ferrara Candy was to be announced before Christmas, the Post reported. Neither West nor spokespeople at Ferrara would confirm the sale to the Post.

 

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