Based in Rochester, New York, Pennant supplies speciality bakery products and solutions to quick-serve restaurants, foodservice and retail in-store bakeries in North America. The business employs 100 people and generates sales of more than $70m a year.
“This acquisition will allow us to increase our positioning in North America, especially in foodservice,” said Puratos CEO Daniel Malcorps.
Puratos expansion
Headquartered in Groot-Bijgaarden on the outskirts of Brussels, Puratos Group supplies products, raw materials and expertise to artisan and industrial bakers, retailers and foodservice customers in the bakery, patisserie and chocolate sectors. Its product range includes bread improvers, margarines and specialty fats, custard cream mixes, glazes, non-dairy toppings, pralinés and nut pastes.
With a turnover of $1.5bn (€1.4bn ), the group employs around 7,000 people across the globe and manufactures from 55 sites across 43 countries.
The Pennant deal comes seven months after Puratos announced its acquisition of Bakery Future Lines (BFL), an Italian family-owned company based in La Spezia, Liguria. BFL produces bakery ingredients and specializes in innovating natural yeast and sourdough products, and has developed powdered sourdough said to give good texture and palatability in sweet products such as traditional panettone, and can also be used in brioches and croissants.
Sourdough plans
Speaking at the Puratos Taste Tomorrow event in October this year, Malcorps said he believed “the future of bread is the past of bread; and the future is in sourdough”.
“When we talk to consumers and ask them what type of bread they want to eat they said ‘The good bread of old times’,” he added.
Malcorps said he felt sourdough was often neglected by the bakery industry because of the time it took to ferment and manufacture at scale. He said there were now ways to boost sourdough’s manufacturing productivity that could be used to help improve the creativity and quality of breads.