Irish nutrition company Glanbia has sold the US arm of SlimFast to US packaged goods group Heartland Food Products.
The financial terms of the deal, which also covers the product’s business in certain other jurisdictions, were not disclosed. However, Glanbia valued the US business at €44.1 million at the end of last year.
SlimFast was designated as a “non-core” part of Glanbia’s business in February. A process is ongoing for the sale of SlimFast in remaining jurisdictions. The UK is the largest market for SlimFast outside North America.
Heartland, which owns the brand Splenda, produces low calorie sweeteners, drink mixes, coffee, and nutritional beverages.
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Glanbia bought SlimFast from Kainos for $350 million (€295 million) in 2018 as part of plans to increase its exposure to lifestyle consumers, but reported a non-cash impairment charge of $91 million last year relating to falling sales at the business unit.
A top-to-bottom rebrand in 2022 failed to arrest falling sales and, as part of its full-year results earlier this year, Glanbia announced it planned to offload the underperforming brand, seven years after buying it.
The decline of the SlimFast brand, which was highly successful for parts of the 1980s and 1990s, has largely been put down to warnings from nutritionists around the health implications of replacing wholefoods with highly processed synthetic shakes.
When the decision to sell the brand was announced, Glanbia said the rationale was “clear” and linked it to “changing consumer behaviour around weight loss”.
Consumer goods giant Unilever previously owned the business after acquiring it in 2000 for $2.3 billion.
Glanbia raised its earnings forecast for the year last month and also announced the sale of its underperforming Body & Fit unit.
The company, which has been struggling to contend with a spike in the cost of whey proteins, a key input, said revenue for the first six months of the year increased by 6 per cent to $1.9 billion.
Ted Gelov, Heartland chairman and chief executive, said the both SlimFast and Splenda can deliver “trusted solutions in weight management and sugar reduction, two of the biggest consumer needs shaping the future of nutrition”.
