The Yucaipa Cos., a private equity firm, bought a 49% stake in Versacold International Corp., an operator of temperature-controlled warehouses, from Icelandic shipping and logistics company Hf. Eimskipafelag Islands, or Eimskip.
Yucaipa, Los Angeles, also acquired the option to purchase the remaining 51% of Versacold, though the private equity firm said that it would not pursue a majority stake in the company “at present.”
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Versacold operates 120 cold-storage warehouses in Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Yucaipa pegged the company’s annual sales at about $1.2 billion.
“I believe that Yucaipa’s complementary and extensive operations in logistics will facilitate Versacold’s current plans to expand its presence in public refrigerated warehousing, third-party logistics and transportation,” said Ron Burkle, managing partner of Yucaipa.
Yucaipa also owns Americold Realty Trust, which operates 104 cold-storage facilities in the United States.
Yucaipa announced the purchase of its stake in Versacold in a press release detailing the private equity firm’s participation in Eimskip’s $2 billion restructuring.
Eimskip, based in Reykjavik, was hit hard by Iceland’s economic collapse last year and had looked to sell its cold-storage business in order to focus on core shipping and logistics operations, the company said in a joint release with Yucaipa.
