Landec is Focused on Products That Support Everyone’s Unique Health & Wellness Journey
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. Our Landec Natural Foods business is comprised of a portfolio of six brands, while Lifecore Biomedical is Landec’s CDMO business.
Natural Foods Business
Landec Natural Foods is focused on delivering fresh packaged vegetables, salad and delicious meal solutions with 100% clean ingredient products across six brands, Eat Smart® packaged fresh vegetables, O Olive Oil & Vinegar® premium oils and vinegars, Now Planting® pure-plant meal solutions, Yucatan®, Cabo Fresh® and BreatheWay®, patented food packaging technology. Landec was founded in 1986 and Landec’s patented food packaging technology, BreatheWay, was introduced in 1995 to naturally extend the shelf life of fresh cut vegetables. In 1999, Landec acquired Apio, the home of the Eat Smart brand, and 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, leveraging the BreatheWay packaging technology to naturally keep vegetables fresher longer. 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. In 2012, Apio acquired GreenLine Foods, Inc. adding green beans to its portfolio and creating a national fresh food distribution network to better serve customers across North America. With a deep understanding of consumer eating trends, Apio entered the salad kit market in that same year 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. 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 foodies. The second initiative is the internal development of a new brand, Now Planting, designed to meet the needs of the rapidly growing plant-forward consumer segment who define healthy eating as primarily plant-based, with over 70% of their meals coming from plants. The first platform to be introduced under the Now Planting brand was a line of fresh, pure-plant soups, celebrating the flavors, textures and nutritional richness of plants. In November 2018, Landec acquired Yucatan Foods, a leading manufacturer fresh guacamole and other avocado products, sold under the Yucatan and Cabo Fresh brands. All products are made with 100% clean ingredients and fresh Haas avocados make up about 95% of the total product ingredients. Landec’s New Venture Group continues to explore new and innovative offerings in the rapidly evolving natural foods market space.
Contract Development & Manufacturing Organization (CDMO)
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.
