Wednesday, July 20, 2005

More changes at Vance

There are more changes at Vance Publishing, where I was once senior writer. And as I've been saying for awhile now, the changes point to a divesture of some properties.
In the latest move, all the food-related publications, including the Packer newspaper and the Red Book directory have been rolled into a new division called Food360°. According to this undated press release, Vance's Produce, Crops and Livestock divisions are now part of Food360°.
The revamp seems to be a departure from the plan, announced just six months ago, to reorganize the food properites into a single unit with two divisions --produce and animal foods.
But whether it's two divisions or one, Food360° now functions largely as a standalone company based in the suburbs of Kansas City. To me, that looks like preperation for a sale. (The rest of Vance's properties, which cover the wood, hair salon and home decor industries, still report to company headquarters in Lincolnshire, Ill.)
I'll continue to predict that Vance plans to sell the food publications. And I'll continue to predict that the buyer will be Ascend Media -- which is based just a hop, skip and a jump down the road from Food360° in Johnson County.

tags: , , , ,

No comments:

Post a Comment