Landec Creates Innovative Products That Support Everyone’s Unique Health & Wellness Journey
Founded in 1986, Landec Corporation has a rich history of developing and commercializing new products that advance health and wellness. Our roots and our passion are in innovation. We focus on products for the natural foods and CDMO markets that enrich people’s lives and deliver value to our customers and shareholders. Landec’s natural foods business is comprised of three brands: Eat Smart® packaged fresh vegetables, O Olive Oil & Vinegar®, Now Planting® pure plant meal solutions, while Lifecore Biomedical is Landec’s CDMO business.
Eat Smart leverages Landec’s patented food packaging technology, BreatheWay®, which was first introduced in 1995 to naturally extend the shelf life of fresh cut vegetables. In 2007, Landec acquired Apio, the home of the Eat Smart brands. Since that time, Eat Smart has become a leader in the packaged fresh vegetable market with differentiated offerings developed for retail grocery stores, club stores, and food service operators. In 2012, Apio acquired GreenLine Foods, Inc. adding green beans to its portfolio and creating a national distribution network to better serve customers across North America. In 2011, Apio became a strategic investor in Windset Farms, one of the largest and fastest growing companies in the hydroponic, greenhouse grown produce market. With a deep understanding of consumer eating trends, Apio entered the salad kit market in 2012 with disruptive and delicious products like the Eat Smart Sweet Kale Salad that make it easy and convenient for people to eat vegetables every day.
In 2017, the Landec New Ventures Group (NVG) was formed to become the in-house, entrepreneurial arm for Landec natural foods business. The first initiative by this group was the acquisition of O Olive & Vinegar, the premium provider of all-natural and organic olive oils and wine vinegars marketed under the O brand to retail and club stores. The winner of 17 SOFI awards, O has a passionate following among chefs and food explorers. The second initiative is the internal development of a new brand, Now Planting, designed to meet the needs of people who define healthy eating as primarily plant-based, with over 70% of their meals coming from plants. The first platform to be introduced is a fresh line of plant-based soups that celebrate the flavor, texture and nutritional richness of plants. The Landec New Ventures Group continues to explore new and innovative offerings in the rapidly evolving natural foods market space.
In 2010, Landec acquired Lifecore, a developer of premium-grade sodium hyaluronate (HA)-based biomaterials for primary use in the ophthalmic and orthopedic markets. This acquisition expanded Landec’s capabilities in materials science and created a new innovative technology platform. Over decades of working with highly viscous HA products, Lifecore developed differentiated capabilities in formulating, fermenting and filling hard-to-handle FDA-approved products. In 2016 Lifecore invested in new equipment, facilities and capabilities to broaden its offering beyond HA and offer its services as an FDA-approved contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO). This evolution leverages the company’s heritage in HA and focuses its services on therapeutic solutions that require technically challenging formulating, filtering and filling operations, which Lifecore is uniquely qualified to deliver.
Today, Landec’s businesses are positioned at the intersection of two growth sectors: Healthy Eating & Better Living, which work in tandem to support our mission to create innovative products that support everyone’s unique health and wellness journey.
