Our Story
Getting the Band Back Together
1990s
Neither of us imagined we’d be here. Longtime friends, Craig and Elliot met in the late 1990s when Elliot was working for P&G in their Pringles business and Craig was the Sr. Packaged Foods Analyst for Sanford Bernstein. Introduced by a mutual friend, they joined forces to bring insights to investors in Food & Beverage companies.
2000s
Both moved over to the buyside at Ospraie Management. After Ospraie, they built their own investment management firms. Craig ran a $1.3bn long/short equity fund. Elliot founded a credit-focused PE firm. Each spent about 15 years managing institutional money.
2022
Fast forward to 2022, Craig had left his role as President of Golding Farms Foods, a PE-backed, multi-site dressings & sauces manufacturer, and Elliot’s PE fund had exited its last investment. It was time to get the band back together.
While at Golding, Craig had experienced first-hand the numerous operational challenges that middle-market manufacturers face on a daily basis. Many of these could and should have been identified during due diligence and addressed immediately pre- or post-closing, he believed. Ultimately, the financial sponsor retained operational consulting firms, on two separate occasions, to try to professionalize the business’s operational practices. Yet neither consultancy was able to achieve the buy-in necessary to enable the company to achieve sustainable improvements.
It was clear to Craig that there was a need for a different approach to operational support in the middle market – there must be a better solution, he thought. Craig believed that more effective operational diligence and post-closing support could be provided to manufacturers and financial sponsors if it was delivered by a cross-functional team of experienced food & beverage practitioners (rather than career consultants or generalists) who ‘know what good looks like’ and have spent decades ‘walking in the shoes’ of its clients….and hence Saphineia was born.
Saphineia is Conceived Based on These Three Insights
Manufacturing Is Hard
Food & Beverage manufacturing is hard, particularly for middle-market manufacturers who must perform all the same activities as their larger counterparts, but without all the resources, training or business processes.
A Large Underserved Market
There are literally thousands of small and midsized food & beverage manufacturers in North America, most of whom would benefit from adopting leading manufacturing best practices.
Profit Improvement Potential
Because of these factors, most small and midsize food & beverage manufacturers have opportunities to increase margins and reduce risk by improving shop-floor performance.
