Sun Pacific, Moonlight buy Prima Wawona land for $91 million
Sun Pacific, Moonlight buy Prima Wawona land for $91 million
The majority of Prima Wawona's land has been sold, and as suggested by a San Joaquin Valley grower in an October article on The Produce News, the sale was at a highly discounted price.
Last year Prima Wawona reportedly received a $275 million bid for the business but did not move forward with it. At the time a report put together by Pearson Realty estimated the company had about 13,500 acres of land to liquidate, with a value of approximately $370 million.
Now Sun Pacific and Moonlight Cos. have purchased approximately 5,000 acres of the land for $91 million; about 1,300 acres of Prima Wawona's land remains unsold, according to The Fresno Bee.
Last October, Prima Wawona announced that it was filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy in an effort to implement an ownership change. At the time, the company said the bankruptcy filing was expected to expedite the sale of the company to a qualified third party. In December, an attorney for Prima Wawona announced that the company was not able to receive a sufficient bid for its business through an auction process and would be liquidating its assets.
According to court documents, Prima Wawona had more than $300 million in sales revenue in 2022. The filing revealed that the company had about $679 million in debt on October of 2023. At its height, Prima Wawona was valued at more than $1 billion.
The San Joaquin Valley-based, family-owned-and-operated Wawona Frozen Foods is not affiliated in any way with the fresh fruit company Prima Wawona.