May’s Hawaii, a manufacturer of meats and poultry such as kalua pork, teriyaki chicken and beef patties, has been sold to Gouvea’s & Purity Foods Inc., another Hawaii-based maker of meat products, for undisclosed terms.
The sale closed last week.
“Just like our melting pot state, we continue to set new traditions by coming together,” Bill Loose, chairman of the board of Palama Holding Co., seller of May’s Hawaii, said Monday in a statement.
Palama Holding will continue to operate distribution company H&W Foods, according to Scott Stevenson, president of Gouvea’s & Purity.
“We’re going to keep the production at the Palama facility at Kapolei for six months,” Stevenson said, and then will reassess operational plans. Roughly 10 employees are involved in production at Palama Holding, he said, giving Gouvea’s more than 30 employees in Hawaii.
Gouvea’s & Purity sausages “are made on the mainland, so we can utilize all fresh pork by doing that. We have production in Northern California and Texas,” Stevenson said. Production of Gouvea’s & Purity products is done by separately owned processors. Gouvea’s & Purity also owns the Hawaiian Sausage Co. brand, widely available locally.
About 10 sales and administration people at Palama lost their jobs in the deal, though three were hired by Gouvea’s and three were hired by H&W, and Gouvea’s is working to find jobs for the others, Stevenson said.
The way the sale came about is a common Hawaii story, in that Stevenson and Loose were classmates at Punahou “so we’ve been close friends, and the investors, I think, decided that they wanted to sell me the brand and focus on the (H&W Foods) distribution business. It’s just such a wonderful fit for our company because we have all the same customers, and we have really good customer service at all the retailers,” Stevenson said.
Separately, Gouvea’s announced it will be launching a new brand, Hawaiian Factory Fishcake, in January.
May’s was established in the late 1960s. Palama Meat Co. founder Donald Lau named the brand after his wife.
Gouvea’s was established in 1933 by Jacinto Gouvea, who passed the company to his son Walter, who in turn passed it to Milton Gouvea and his children. Family friend Bill Atherton purchased the company in 2006.
Al Rego and his brother Leonard, of Leonard’s Bakery, bought Purity Foods and rebranded it in 1957. Stevenson, Al Rego’s grandson, now owns the company.
