The Swiss chocolate maker Chocoladefabriken Lindt and Sprungli said on Monday that it had reached an agreement to acquire Russell Stover Candies, a US maker of boxed chocolates.
The deal to acquire Russell Stover, which is based in Kansas City, Missouri, is expected to make Lindt the third-largest chocolate manufacturer in North America. Lindt already owns the Ghirardelli Chocolate Co, whose former factory is a tourist attraction in San Francisco.
“This biggest and most important strategic acquisition to date in Lindt and Sprungli’s history is a unique opportunity for us to expand our North American chocolate business and will greatly enhance the group’s status in the world’s biggest overall chocolate marketplace,” Lindt chairman Ernst Tanner said.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Russell Stover was founded in 1923 in Denver by Russell and Clara Stover, who originally marketed their product under the name Mrs Stover’s Bungalow Candies. The Stover family sold the business in 1960 to Louis Ward, who expanded the Russell Stover brand across the US.
The company’s gift boxes were made famous in the film Forrest Gump, in which the title character, played by Tom Hanks, says as he eats the chocolates at a bus stop: “My mama always said, life was like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Ward died in 1996, but his family continued to run the business.
His family hired Goldman Sachs this year to sell the company.
Russell Stover, which acquired the Whitman’s brand of boxed chocolates in 1993, has annual revenue of about US$500 million, Lindt said. Russell Stover operates four chocolate factories in the US, employs about 2,700 people and has 35 retail outlets.
After the transaction, Russell Stover is to maintain its headquarters in Kansas City, Lindt said.
Lindt is financing the transaction through cash and debt.
As a result of the deal, Lindt said it expected to reach annual revenue of US$1.5 billion next year in North America.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”