Ultima Foods Inc. is a partnership of Quebec based dairy company Agropur and Alberta-based Agrifoods International Cooperative Ltd. The company produces fresh dairy products such as yogurt and cheese. Ultima Foods is the franchisee for the Yoplait brand in Canada, and was formed in 1993. Agropur has been the Yoplait franchisee holder in Canada since 1971.
Ultima Foods was formed when Agropur and Agrifoods, the two largest dairy cooperatives in Canada, combined their yogurt and fresh cheese marketing and manufacturing activities in 1993.
Founded in 1938, Agropur Cooperative has over 5,500 employees at 27 plants and numerous distribution centres and offices across Canada, the U.S. and Argentina.
Agrifoods International Cooperative Ltd. is a federal cooperative owned by dairy producers in Alberta, British Colombia and Saskatchewan. Agrifoods specializes in the transportation and logistics of raw milk to processors and transportation of dairy byproducts for processors, with depots in Abbotsford, B.C., Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta, as well as Saskatoon, Regina and Swift Current, Saskatchewan.
The board of directors of Agrifoods recently announced that the Yoplait license would not be renewed and that Ultima would compete with Yoplait in the Canadian market with a new brand.
Yoplait offered to purchase the Agrifoods' portion of Ultima Foods for approximately $5.00 per Agrifoods share (approximately $100m) in March 2011. Agrifoods' board turned down the offer without informing members of the offer. As a result, a number of Agrifoods members formed a group to push the board towards selling Agrifoods' interest in Ultima Foods in order to avoid competing with Yoplait without a license
In Canada, Ultima Foods has produced and marketed Yoplait yogurt brands for 40 years, including Minigo, Tubes, Source, Creamy, Yop, Yoptimal and Asana.
Ultima Foods also owns Olympic Dairy, a manufacturer of premium natural cultured dairy, organic and soy products. For over 30 years, Olympic has produced over 140 different products in a variety of sizes and flavours.
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