All American Label & Packaging, a portfolio company of Heartwood Partners, has merged with Western Shield Label and Packaging, a provider of pressure-sensitive labels and packaging products.
Located just outside of San Francisco, All American is headquartered in Dublin, California and operates a manufacturing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The company produces a variety of label and packaging products including digital labels, offset labels, shrink sleeves, folding cartons, flexible packaging and grand format signage.
Founded in 1995, All American serves customers in end markets including food & beverage, cannabis, health & beauty, automotive and industrials.
Located just outside Los Angeles in Rancho Dominguez, California, Western Shield provides custom printed labels and packaging products for manufacturers, distributors and brokers in the food and beverage, health and beauty and industrials industries. With additional facilities in Dallas, Texas and Middletown, Ohio, the company serves customers throughout the United States, Mexico and Canada.
“All American serves similar and adjacent end markets such wine and spirits and will allow us to extend our manufacturing footprint into the Southeast,” said Western Shield CEO Nizar Elias. “We are excited about this merger and our combined ability to provide even greater service and expertise to our combined customers.”
“We are excited to join forces with the deep bench of wonderful and talented people at Western Shield,” said All American founder Brad Brown. “We have evaluated several opportunities in the market, and none had the kind of sales and operational synergies we see here.”
“We were pleased to support All American and Western Shield with this transformational merger,” said Demetrios Dounis, a managing director at Heartwood Partners. “The combination of these businesses makes tremendous sense and creates a number of ways for them to win. Our unique equity-rich capital structure resonated with the management teams and owners of both All American and Western Shield.”
Connecticut-based Heartwood invests in United States based companies that have revenues from $30 million to $400 million and EBITDA between $5 million to $30 million. Sectors of interest include agriculture, auto and truck aftermarket, consumer products, distribution, food, industrial services niche manufacturing, packaging, and specialty chemicals and materials.
“Moving forward we anticipate the combined businesses will remain active acquirers in the pressure sensitive labels space,” added Mr. Dounis.
Heartwood closed its third fund, Heartwood Partners III LP, at $600 million in September 2020. The firm is currently raising its fourth fund, Heartwood Partners IV LP, and has raised $297.9 million of its $700 million target according to its most recent regulatory filing. The Norwalk, Connecticut-based firm was founded as Capital Partners in 1982 and changed its name to Heartwood Partners in September 2020.
Mesirow was the financial advisor to Western Shield on this transaction.
© 2022 Private Equity Professional | April 14, 2022
