Sioux City, Iowa-headquartered Cloverleaf Cold Storage, a refrigerated warehousing company serving customers across the United States Midwest and Southeast, has merged with Fort Smith, Arkansas-based Zero Mountain, Inc. Terms of the deal, facilitated by the New York City-based Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm with almost $500 billion in assets under management and holdings in more than 95 companies including a majority interest stake in Cloverleaf, were not announced.
The merger creates the fourth largest cold storage warehouse platform in North America with approximately 140 million cubic feet of capacity, and a footprint in all three major US protein production corridors.
“I am so pleased with the teams in Iowa and Arkansas for working through the complex process of merging. They did it in under 60 days, which speaks well of the administration and organization of both companies,” said Co-CEO Bill Feiges.
Zero Mountain was founded in 1955 by the Rumsey family. The business ships over 2.5 billion pounds of food annually and manages over 38 million cubic feet of total capacity in five cold storage facilities, with expansions underway both in Arkansas and Texas.
Cloverleaf was founded in 1952 by the Kaplan and Feiges families, and currently operates 19 warehouses with over 102 million cubic feet of total capacity. It serves over 800 customers, many with whom the company has had a relationship for more than 30 years.
The combined companies will focus on continued growth with additions to facilities in Chesapeake, Virginia, and North Little Rock, Arkansas that have already broken ground. A new facility in Waco, Texas, is in the design phase, and land has already been acquired for the project.
