The packer and processor of two famous brands of canned and frozen vegetables for the Canadian market plans to pick up the brands themselves.
Quebec-based Nortera, which was known until 2022 as Bonduelle Americas, announced Oct. 27 it has a deal to buy the Green Giant and Le Sieur brands in Canada from New Jersey-based B&G Foods for an undisclosed sum.
Nortera, which deals with over 400 growers across Canada, has been B&G’s packer for the two brands in Canada for about 30 years. B&G’s Canadian arm has promoted Green Giant products here as “proudly grown and packed in Canada.”
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“This acquisition ensures that these iconic brands, long produced in Canada, are now also locally owned,” Nortera CEO Hugo Boisvert said in a release.
Why it matters: Given consumers’ revived interest this year in buying Canadian, the deal would further clarify the status of two popular retail vegetable brands grown by Canadian farmers.
The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2026 at the latest, pending regulators’ approval in Canada, B&G said in a separate release.
Nortera today has eight plants in Canada and five in the U.S. It packs and processes the two brands at three Canadian plants: Lethbridge, Alta; Tecumseh, Ont., east of Windsor; and Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu, Que., northeast of Montreal.
A five-year, $28 million program of upgrades was announced Oct. 15 for the Saint-Denis plant, which, along with vegetable and legume canning, also handles soups and sauces. The upgrades are expected to expand the plant’s capacity to 10.6 million case equivalents from its current six million.
The Saint-Denis expansion is expected to create about 70 permanent jobs, but also means the closure of the company’s plant at nearby Saint-Césaire, expected to take effect by late January 2026. That closure is expected to affect about 100 positions, but staff there can apply for open jobs at the Saint-Denis plant, Nortera said.
“These investments will help ensure the continuity of local agricultural production in Quebec in the years ahead,” Nortera said in a separate release.
Nortera, which also holds the Arctic Gardens and Del Monte brands in Canada and makes private-label products for retailers, said Oct. 27 it’s “strengthening and consolidating its partnerships with more than 100 growers and suppliers, securing local agricultural networks and supporting food sovereignty in Canada.”
‘Non-core’
The Green Giant brand and mascot were first developed in the U.S. in the 1920s by the Minnesota Valley Canning Co., whose home base of Le Sueur, Minn. provided the name for Le Sueur peas, which in Canada are instead sold as “Le Sieur.”
The two veg businesses changed hands several times before B&G bought both from General Mills in 2015 for US$765 million.
B&G already sold the Green Giant U.S. shelf-stable line to Seneca Foods in 2023 and the Le Sueur U.S. shelf-stable line to McCall Farms in August this year. B&G still holds the Green Giant U.S. frozen vegetable brand but said it “continues to evaluate and pursue (its) possible divestiture.”
B&G’s food and consumer product brands in the U.S. and Canada still include Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Skinny Girl, Sugar Twin and Static Guard, among others.
CEO Casey Keller on Oct. 27 described the sale of the two brands to Nortera as part of an “ongoing effort to divest brands and product lines that are non-core to B&G Foods’ long-term strategy, sharpen our focus and reduce long-term debt.”
In its 2024 annual report, B&G said while Green Giant in particular “remains a strong brand with broad awareness and distribution … it may not be the right fit with B&G Foods’ focus and capabilities, particularly since there are no plans to add more assets in the frozen portfolio given the opportunities in our core shelf-stable businesses and overall capital constraints.”
