Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

Spam maker Hormel to buy Skippy peanut butter

The company best known for canned and deli meats is taking Skippy off the hands of the huge food conglomerate Unilever for a cool $700 million.

Hormel makes things like deli ham, Dinty Moore canned stews, and of course, spam.

“You might see some recipe ideas that may not sound very palatable,” jokes Robert Moskow, a senior analyst at Credit Suisse.

Unilever is shedding brands as it focuses less on food and more on products like shampoo.

Hormel is diversifying beyond meat, dabbling in Mexican and Indian foods, and now peanut butter. Skippy is the number two brand in the U.S. after Jif, and has been growing in China.

And Moskow thinks this is a chance for Hormel to have a bigger part of the shopping cart.

“Selling it to a buyer in a grocery store that tends to be buying both meat-based products and peanut butter. It’s the same person quite often,” he says, adding that Hormel is likely in the market for more non-meat brands, as it moves beyond spam.

Related Topics

Collections: