Campbell Soup creates new biz unit to house newly acquired Sovos Brands

CAMDEN, New Jersey — Campbell Soup Co. (NYSE: CPB) this week completed its $2.7 billion acquisition of Sovos Brands Inc. (Nasdaq: SOVO), carving out a new business unit to house the Louisville-based food-umbrella company.

Risa Cretella, previously Sovos’ chief sales officer, will lead Campbell’s new Distinctive Brands unit within its Meals & Beverages division.

With the acquisition, Campbell has added three brands previously owned by Sovos: Rao’s pasta sauce, Noosa Yoghurt and Michael Angelo’s frozen entrées. The trio will be paired in the Distinctive Brands unit with Pacific Foods, a soups, broths and stocks brand acquired by Campbell in 2017.

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“This important milestone in Campbell’s history adds several market-leading and scaled premium brands to our company,” Campbell CEO Mark Clouse said in a prepared statement. “It accelerates Campbell’s successful strategy and provides a substantial runway for sustained profitable growth. An enhanced Meals & Beverages division paired with our differentiated Snacks division creates an advantaged portfolio that makes Campbell one of the most dependable and growth-oriented large capitalization value names in food.”

Last summer, just after Campbell went public with its plans to absorb Sovos, executives at the soup giant said they would explore offloading the Bellvue-based Noosa Yoghurt brand. Clouse said in an August 2023 conference call that “yogurt is not core to our strategy.”

With the deal complete, Noosa still does not appear to factor into Campbell’s long-term strategy. While the brand “is a well-run business supported by a dedicated team,” Campbell said this week that it “plans to evaluate strategic alternatives for the brand.”

Noosa was co-founded in 2009 by Koel Thomae, an Australian expat, and Rob Graves, a Colorado dairy farmer, who set out to bring the Aussie-style yogurt with a creamy texture and sweet-tart flavor profile to the U.S. market. The yogurt is made with whole milk, a touch of wildflower North American honey and real fruit purées on a family farm in Larimer County.

Campbell leaders have been mum on how the acquisition will affect Sovos’ Colorado operations. However the company reiterated this week that the deal will result in the elimination of $50 million in annual redundant costs, much of which could to be cleaved from Sovos’ administrative operations, which, of course, were headquartered in Boulder County.