Mainebiz

W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 23 A U G U S T 2 1 , 2 0 1 7 F O C U S G R E AT E R B A N G O R operation from out-of-state suppliers. e wet, heavy blend is costly to transport, so buying from the Bangor plant should save Bob Evans money, Michelson says. Each tote of wet milk blend holds about gal- lons, weighing , pounds each, so a tractor trailer can hold , pounds of blend. Bob Evans now gets three trailer loads of milk blend per week from New York and elsewhere, Whitney says. "Bob Evans out of Mars Hill [will] spend million a year on milk blend," predicts Michelson. "Milk blend companies already are stretched, so The art of a deal. Or, 'How do you like them potatoes'? L ibra Foundation has made some astute invest- ments, including the sale, repurchase and resale of its Pineland Farms Potato Co. in Mars Hill. The potato company started in 1997 as Naturally Potatoes, selling cut potatoes and later refrigerated mashed potatoes. Libra bought Naturally Potatoes, which was teetering on insolvency, in 1999, and cleared its debt and shareholders, says Jere Michelson, president, chief operating offi cer and CFO of Portland-based Libra Foundation. "We sold it in 2005 to Basic American Foods of San Francisco," he says. "They were the nation's leading dehydrated potato producer. They wanted to diversify their revenue stream and get into the fresh refrigerated business." But the potato company fl oundered. Michelson had stayed in touch with Basic American's top man- agement and discovered they were considering sell- ing the business in 2009. "We bought it back in 2010 for less than half of what we sold it," he says. The company was renamed Pineland Farms Potato Co. in 2013. "We sold it to them for about $31 million, and we bought it back for $12.75 million. And they put in at least $8 mil- lion in capital improvements on top of that." He adds, "Then we sold it again this past May for $115 million to Bob Evans. And there's a two-year earn-out on top of that [if certain metrics are met]. We fully expect to realize that extra $25 million." The potato company's revenues topped $50 million when Libra sold it. The sale closed May 1. The timing was right, he says, because Libra wanted to the private sector to take over the potato company, and Bob Evans, its biggest customer, needed more capacity. "It fi ts hand-in-glove," he says, adding that Bob Evans' Lima, Ohio, plant is sourcing potatoes from Aroostook County, giving growers a chance to increase their production. Taking the transaction a step further, Libra is using the money from the sale to revive the former Grant's Dairy in Bangor into both a cheese and milk blend operation. Libra Foundation, created by Elizabeth Noyce in 1989, focuses on investing in Maine. It had total assets of almost $118 million for the year ended Dec. 31, 2016. C O N T I N U E D O N F O L L OW I N G PA G E »

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