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GOURMET NEWS MAY 2017 www.gourmetnews.com NEWS & NOTES 6 Highlander Partners Forms Bettera Brands, LLC to Pursue Confection and Snack Acquisitions Private investment firm Highlander Part- ners, L.P. has formed Bettera Brands, LLC, a new holding company headquartered in San Francisco, California, to pursue a "buy and build" strategy in the confection and snack industry, targeting acquisitions of companies and assets that have excellent brand equity and strong growth potential. Bettera is focused on creating value through customer cross-pollination, geo- graphic expansion and new product devel- opment. Bettera's principals have executed more than 30 transactions in the food, con- fection and snack categories and will use their expertise to pursue acquisitions of both stand-alone businesses and carve-outs from larger companies. Highlander Partners, the majority share- holder of Bettera, manages its proprietary capital and has more than $1.2 billion in capital dedicated to private equity invest- ments. The firm is committed to providing significant capital to Bettera to facilitate its growth organically and through acquisi- tions. In connection with Bettera's formation, Gimbal Brothers, LLC has been acquired by Highlander. Gimbal's, founded in 1898, is a leading manufacturer of gummy vitamins and gourmet jelly beans with a long history of exceptional product quality, excellent customer service and strong innovation. The company has fully integrated manufac- turing capabilities, and its production facil- ity is SQF Level 3, NSF/CFR111 certified for vitamins and dietary supplements. Gim- bal's products have a loyal consumer fol- lowing and can be found in most national retailers across North America. The exist- ing owners of Gimbal's joined the Bettera ownership and will continue their support of the Gimbal's brand. Simultaneously with the transaction, Highlander contributed its portfolio com- pany, Hillside Candy, into Bettera, adding the Hillside brands of GoOrganic, Go- Lightly, Hillside Candy and Pick Your Color to the Bettera portfolio. Bettera's product offering now includes gourmet jelly beans, gummy vitamins, or- ganic and sugar-free hard and chewy con- fections, licorice and traditional hard candy. The company also uses its unique capabilities to incorporate nutraceutical in- gredients and essential oils into confec- tionery delivery systems, a growing trend in the nutraceutical space. Estle Kominowski, former COO of Gim- bal's and newly-appointed CEO of Bettera Brands, commented, "I am excited to part- ner with the Highlander team and comple- ment our expertise with their deep experience, industry relationships and fi- nancial resources. As a result of attractive market dynamics, diverse product offer- ings, and solid operational strength, Gim- bal's has experienced strong financial performance that will continue under the Bettera umbrella. The combined product offering will enhance the company's suc- cess in further penetrating current cus- tomers while adding new ones and positions the company for exceptional per- formance in the future." Jeff L. Hull, the newly-appointed Chair- man of Bettera and President of High- lander, also commented, "Highlander's forte is a 'buy and build' strategy in frag- mented industries, which we have exe- cuted successfully in several categories. Establishing Bettera Brands in conjunc- tion with our acquisition of Gimbal's shortly after we acquired Hillside will provide a launchpad for additional trans- actions. This is just the beginning of our long-term vision. We have a robust pipeline of acquisition opportunities that will complement Bettera's offerings and enhance the company's position in the market. Just like the transactions com- pleted to date, we will be looking for quality businesses with strong confection and snack brands, exceptional consumer loyalty, a history of innovation and defen- sible margins. We firmly believe that Bet- tera's strong management team together with Highlander's expertise and signifi- cant capital will allow us to build a very special company in the confection and snack space." GN Pennsylvania Meat Producer Installs 4,000th Solar Module Just in time for the celebration of Earth Day, Godshall's Quality Meats has sur- passed 4,000 solar modules installed across its three Pennsylvania facilities. Godshall's, in business since 1945, is now at the vanguard of modern facilities pro- ducing fine meat delicacies for the entire nation. "We're excited to have a 1233kW sys- tem up and operating," explains Ron Godshall, Chief Operating Officer. "We see this as an investment as well as an ex- pression of positive corporate citizenship. Even more, stewardship of the earth is in keeping with our faith, which we hold as being integral to our success." Godshall's success is something of a story in itself, growing from a local butcher shop to an international supplier of both branded and private label. Godshall's flagship product is a real meat, real wood-smoked turkey bacon, and many of its other prod- ucts also utilize lower fat recipes with turkey and chicken. The company's recent drive has been toward offering many more all-natural and uncured options. Uncured meats have no nitrites or nitrates except those naturally occurring in sea salt and celery powder. "Getting free power from empty roof and field space — that's a no-brainer," adds President and CEO Mark Godshall. Under Godshall's leadership, the com- pany has not only grown at an unprece- dented rate but also enacted water recycling programs, converted some sys- tems to cleaner burning natural gas, and instituted a 'zero landfill program.' Off- setting more than 2,346 metric tons of carbon annually is just the cherry on that sundae." That amount of carbon is equiv- alent to the carbon dioxide emissions from 5,432 barrels of oil or 2,503,842 pounds of coal burned. "In the modern marketplace, it's not enough to have great taste and a whole- some product. Consumers want to know the companies they buy from are making the same efforts they are," said Ron God- shall. "That's why we like to tell folks that we're a great choice for a healthier you, healthier planet." GN Paul Hawken Continued from PAGE 1 "Proverbs are true, but they're not solu- tions. It's not helpful." The goal of Project Drawdown was to identify the 100 most substantive solutions to global warming, and Hawken drew on the expertise of 120 scientists from 22 countries around the world who offered their ideas on strategies and technologies that are currently available and more than 80 other scientists who conducted peer re- views on those proposals, resulting in well- vetted data to back up a plan based on feasible and scalable projects that are al- ready in place somewhere around the world. "It's not our plan. We did not make this plan. We found it. It's here," Hawken said. "This is humanity's collected wisdom. Are the odds terrible? Yeah. And we'll take the odds." There are costs associated with replicat- ing these working projects in a global effort to solve the problem, but they're less than the cost of dealing with the consequences of global warming, according to Hawken. "That wasn't always true. We're going off old stories and old narratives about the economics," he added. "Is there a business case? What's the business case for double- glazing the planet? Destroying the world?" The per capita cost to achieve drawdown in 2050 is about $1.88 per person on the planet, according to Hawken. "The cost is de minimus. It's nothing at all," he said. "And it's getting cheaper." Food production as it's practiced today is a major contributor to global warming, and thus that industry has the greatest potential to change in ways that can help reverse global warming, most especially through educating girls, Hawken said. Educating girls is sixth on Hawken's list of the most effective means of reducing greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere, and the provision of family planning services that can help women to delay childbearing, if they choose to do so, is seventh. Together, they're the single most powerful solution to global warming, according to Hawken. "When you leave girls in school, they make very different decisions and so do their daughters and their sons," he said. He noted that when girls get the oppor- tunity receive an education, what happens next is that they stay in school and delay childbearing to accommodate their plans to use their education. Slowing the world's population growth will ease the economic stress that drives the need for greater indus- trial production that's fueling global warm- ing, and providing girls with the tools to practice better agriculture can increase the efficiency with which food is produced. Hawken noted that 80 percent of the food produced in the world comes from small- holders, and the majority of them are women. "The majority of the food in the world comes from women," he said. "What they don't get is the training, the seeds and the tools that men get. If they did, food pro- duction would go up." First on that list of effective solutions is changing the way that we refrigerate and air condition our environment to eliminate the use of chlorofluorocarbon compounds, which are potent greenhouse gases. That's followed by increased use of wind turbines to generate electricity, and then by reduc- tion in food waste. It's estimated that about 30 percent of the food produced in the world is wasted, with much of that happen- ing as a result of spoilage during storage and transportation. Improved food storage techniques have already been identified as a priority for United Nations agencies. Adoption of plant-rich diets is another of the top solutions identified by Hawken's group. "We don't mean vegan or vegetarian. We just mean seriously reduced meat con- sumption in the western world," he said. "It's making us sick. That would provide more protein for others in the world." Of the other solutions at the top of Hawken's list, several relate to agriculture and animal husbandry practices, while a few others relate to how we produce energy, in- cluding greater use of rooftop solar power, development of geothermal energy sources and greater reliance on nuclear energy, in- cluding the possibility of hydrogen-boron fu- sion technology that's currently being tested. We need to use all of these potential solu- tions, not just a few of them, according to Hawken. "You can lead in a way that you never imagined because you have, not just the opportunity, but you have the know- how," he assured his audience of natural food producers. "You're right there in the catbird seat, and half of you are women." GN

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