If you’ve spent any time in a grocery store, chances are you’re familiar with the Del Monte brand. The red, white, and yellow label is an icon of convenience, whether you’re cooking up some green beans or mushrooms, packing fruit cups for school lunches, or whipping up a homemade tomato sauce. Unfortunately, there’s a chance that the days of seeing store shelves with Del Monte canned food could be over, as the company has filed for bankruptcy.
In a press release from Del Monte, it was stated that the 139-year-old company would be entering into a restructuring agreement with its lenders that would see the brand selling its assets in bankruptcy court. It had received $912.5 million from a collection of lenders to maintain itself through the hardship, as the company currently planned to continue to operate as it moved forward.
The company claimed that it was currently carrying around $1.2 billion in debt, which it blamed on a confluence of factors. This includes a downturn in demand in the aftermath of COVID-19, which saw factories in Washington and Wisconsin shuttered, as well as sizable debt the company says it has incurred since being acquired by an investor group that includes KKR, Vestar, and Centerview for around $5 billion in 2010. Del Monte underwent a debt restructuring last year that led to a lawsuit from investor Black Diamond Commercial Finance, which claimed to be deprioritized as a lender within the new structure.
Navigating a brutal business landscape
The combination of COVID-related hardships and difficulties with venture capital has been a recurring theme in the post-pandemic food industry. A large number of restaurant chains declared bankruptcy in 2024, and kitchen staples like Tupperware have followed a similar financial path.
It appears that Del Monte is only the latest company to fall to a complex and ever-changing global market. There have also been unforced missteps, including a massive, U.S.-wide canned food recall that forced Del Monte to remove nearly 200,000 cans from circulation across 21 states after an unspecified foreign object was discovered to be present in its cut green bean cans.
Del Monte’s pledge to continue operations in the U.S. means it’s possible that business will continue as usual, though what the impact will be on prices is still unclear. The company also added that some of its international subsidiaries are not included in the bankruptcy filing and will move forward unimpeded by the Chapter 11 filing. The company owns subsidiary Del Monte brands in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and Mexico.
