Concord company that makes McDonald’s coffee sold again, this time for $405 million

S&D Coffee & Tea, a nearly century old Concord-based coffee and tea manufacturer, was sold to Arkansas’s Westrock Coffee for $405 million on Friday by its current owner, Cott Corp.

S&D is one of the country’s largest coffee roasters, mostly supplying coffee and tea products on the secondary market to restaurant chains like McDonald’s and Bojangles’.

In a news release, Westrock said it plans to continue expanding the firm’s Concord facilities, while also growing in Westrock’s home of North Little Rock, Ark.

It’s a quick resale for Cott, which purchased S&D for $355 million in 2016. Cott CEO Tom Harrington said in a news release that the deal positions the company to be a more purely a water company, rather than a water solutions company with a big coffee division.

“This strategic combination will create the nation’s premier coffee, tea and extract supplier that is capable of serving the most complex and demanding customers across the country and around the world,” said Scott Ford, Westrock’s CEO, in a statement.

The combined company will employ about 1,700, and will be able to produce more than 220 million pounds of coffee a year.

‘Bigger impact’

Founded in Charlotte in 1927, S&D had two production facilities and one fulfillment center in Cabarrus County as of the Cott purchase in 2016, all told employing 732 workers in the area.

Ford will run S&D, while Ron Hinson, S&D’s longtime CEO, steps aside.

“I can assure you S&D’s outlook remains secure and will continue to be a vital contributor to the local community and the broader coffee industry,” S&D’s Hinson wrote in a message on the company’s website. “Now our impact can be even bigger.”

A Westrock spokesman declined to comment and S&D not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This story was originally published February 3, 2020 at 11:03 AM.