Billion-dollar Bimbo deal leaves questions
Big bakery merger lives suburban Philadelphia corporate HQ in doubt
Bimbo Bakeries USA, the Horsham-based US arm of Grupo Bimbo - the Wonder Bread of Mexico - said this morning it's paying $959 million for rival Sara Lee Corp.'s fresh bakery operations, which employ 13,000 across the US, including plants in Sunbury and Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
BBU boss Gary Prince says Bimbo will invest another $1 billion in upgrading manufacturing and distribution at the combined companies' 71 U.S. plants.
But "it's too early to tell" if Prince and other executives will stay in Horsham, David Margulies, a spokesman for Bimbo told me. Sara Lee is based in Downers Grove, Ill. Its bakery division is almost as large as BBU's current operations, which employ 15,000.
Bimbo has been based in Horsham since Grupo Bimbo bought the units it didn't already own of the former George Weston Ltd. (which included Arnold, Entenmann's, Freihofer, Stroehmann, and Thomas' English Muffins, among other brands) in 2008.
At that time, Bimbo hired Prince and other Horsham-based Weston executives, and moved its U.S. headquarters here from Fort Worth, Texas. It still has some offices in Fort Worth, Margulies said.
Grupo Bimbo employs over 100,000 worldwide.