EMERGE Commerce Ltd. has closed a $16.8 million acquisition of all the issued and outstanding shares of truLOCAL Inc., a direct-to-consumer, locally sourced meat subscription service in Canada.
The company was recently ranked as Canada’s 14th fastest growing company for 2017-2019 by the Globe and Mail, and is expanding into the U.S
Ghassan Halazon, EMERGE founder and CEO, says the acquisition in the food tech space will generate more purchases of meat in an ever-changing marketplace.
“Throughout the pandemic, online shopping for groceries, and meats in particular, has been a bestselling vertical across both EMERGE and the e-commerce sector at large, sparking our strategic interest in the category, and eventually leading us to the formidable business that is TruLOCAL,” Halazon says.
In the 2020 calendar year, truLOCAL generated revenue of approximately $19.8 million, which is expected to be immediately valuable to EMERGE’s earnings. The acquisition will see the founding team and brand remain in place.
truLOCAL is headquartered at Kitchener, Ont., with offices and facilities in Vancouver, Calgary, and Chicago. In their four years of operation, Marc Lafleur, founder and CEO of truLOCAL, says they have worked together to make themselves the Canadian category in meat subscription.
“In the process, we’ve introduced local farmers, producers, and suppliers to the power of e-commerce, connecting them with thousands of loyal, health-conscious consumers across the country,” he says. “We identified a truly founder-friendly strategic partner that deeply appreciates our culture and is supportive of our ambitious growth plans. We’re excited to leverage EMERGE’s acquisition engine and gain access to their full suite of shared services, data insights, and cross-selling with their extensive member database.”
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