Las Vegas company Gateway Distributors has made an unsolicited bid for Unicity, the supplement business owned by Dutch food group Royal Numico.
Rick Bailey, president and chief executive officer of Gateway, said it had submitted a bid for acquisition of the assets and selected liabilities of Unicity. He said further information will be released once Gateway receives a response to the bid.
Goldman Sachs & Co. has been exclusively retained by Royal Numico to solicit proposals for both Unicity and Rexall Sundown, also owned by Numico. The Dutch group announced late last year that it would divest the businesses following poor results from its American activities. The head of Numico's US operations stepped down last month in a management re-shuffle designed to boost performance. The US activities are being temporarily run by group chief executive Jan Bennink.
Unicity markets nutritional supplements and personal care products and has sales of more than $100 million annually. The acquisition would give Gateway the capacity to compete with some of the industry's leading dietary supplement companies.
Gateway Distributors is a holding company for its subsidiary TRSG, which markets natural foods and supplements as 'The Right Solution'. It sells through its website to North America and Japan.