An affiliate of Rosewood Private Investments, the private equity arm of Dallas-based Rosewood Corp., has acquired Healthy Natural Inc.—an Irving-based contract manufacturing and packaging company of healthy and natural products—for an amount that was said to exceed $18 million.
Allegiance Capital Corp., a Dallas-based investment bank, exclusively represented the seller, Rice Bran Technologies, in the July 14 transaction. Healthy Natural, which makes powder natural drinks, among other things, since 2014 had operated as a wholly owned subsidiary of California-based RBT, a global leader in the production and marketing of products derived from rice bran.
RBT announced that it was paid $18.3 million for Healthy Natural—money it used to eliminate senior and subordinated debt and to improve operating liquidity.
“We are pleased to have completed the sale of Healthy Natural as part of our plan to improve shareholder value creation by focusing on RBT’s ingredients business,” Robert Smith, RBT’s chief executive, said in an announcement. “We were also pleased to sell the business to an established and successful industry participant like Rosewood, whose success in this segment should well serve the Healthy Natural customer base.”
Rosewood Private Investments focuses on investments in the nutrition and wellness, aerospace, manufacturing technologies, and environmental services sectors. The Irving acquisition will be a new addition to the company’s International Nutrition and Wellness Holdings, whose mission is to partner with and acquire companies in the nutrition and wellness industry.
“We’ve been very pleased with our investments in the space thus far, and remain excited about the trends this industry has to offer,” Rosewood PI Vice President Alex Hawkins said in a statement. “We’re hoping to continue to build upon that and, hopefully, Healthy Natural is one of many as we look to continue to broaden our exposure within International Nutrition and Wellness Holdings.”
Hawkins said Rosewood PI had been actively looking for targets in the nutrition and wellness industry for some time. “We worked very hard to move quickly to get the acquisition of Healthy Natural closed within 30 days,” he said. “We feel like that is a testament to our genuine interest in and excitement about the industry.”
