Pinnacle Foods is set to purchase Birds Eye Foods, the country’s largest producer of frozen vegetables, in a $1.3 billion deal. Pinnacle will finance approximately 80 percent of the transaction, assuming $1 billion in debt, according to Bloomberg. The remainder will be funded in equity contributed by Pinnacle’s owner, The Blackstone Group.
Birds Eye includes the business established by Brooklyn-born Clarence Birdseye, a pioneer of the frozen food industry who invented the “flash-freeze” method of preservation in 1922. The Rochester, N.Y.-based company had $935.6 million in sales in the fiscal year ended June 30.
