HOUSTON -- Maryland Club Foods Inc. completed Wednesday the purchase of Coca-Cola Foods' coffee business in a transaction that creates one of the largest independent coffee roasting companies in the United States.
Assets acquired in the transaction by Parkview Investment Management Co. include the Maryland Club coffee plant in Houston and the Butter-Nut coffee plant in Omaha. The purchase price was not disclosed.
About 215 people will work at the Houston plant and administrative offices, and 75 at the Omaha facility.
'We are delighted with the prospect of being an independent stand-alone coffee business,' said H. Grady Tiller, president of the newly formed Maryland Club Foods. 'Coffee is an enormous consumer and food service product category and one in which Maryland Club, Butter-Nut and other related brands have a long history of superior quality and service.
'This transaction benefits our company and Coca-Cola Foods by allowing each to concentrate on its primary business activity.'
The new company has strong roots in the coffee business, Tiller said. Butter-Nut brand coffee first was introduced 75 years ago by the Paxton & Gallagher Co., a firm that began as a trading post in Omaha in 1879.
Those operations merged in 1961 with Duncan Foods Co. of Houston, marketers of Maryland Club coffee since 1928. Coca-Cola Foods, a division of The Coca-Cola Co., purchased Duncan Foods in 1964.
Management of Maryland Club Foods will be led by Tiller as chief executive osfficer and Matt S. Miller as senior vice president-finance and administration.
John W. Starr, senior vice president-sales and marketing, will focus initially on the company's extensive food service operations.
Tiller has been president of the coffee unit for Coca-Cola Foods since 1983 and Miller, most recently director of corporate real estate with The Coca-Cola Co., previously was executive vice president of Coca-Cola Foods.
Starr joins the management team from Thomas J. Lipton Inc., where he was general manager-food service and bottler's concentrate division.
