Canada-based Maple Leaf Foods is hopeful of closing sale of Rothsay, its rendering and biodiesel business, to Darling International of Irving, Texas for C$645m on 28 October.
Rothsay is the leading rendering company in Canada and a leading producer of biodiesel. The company has six rendering facilities in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia and a biodiesel facility in Quebec.
Maple Leaf plans to use the proceeds from the transaction to initially pay down debt.
Following the transaction, the management will then consider appropriate deployment of excess capital, including reinvesting in its core consumer packaged food businesses or returning excess capital to shareholders.
Darling International is a leading and only publicly traded provider of rendering and bakery residuals recycling solutions to the US food industry. The company recycles beef, poultry and pork by-product streams into useable ingredients such as tallow, feed-grade fats, meat and bone meal, poultry meal and hides.
