All 178 Ohio Eagle Distributing employees are expected to be laid off once the company’s sale to Redwood Holdings closes on September 8, Ohio Eagle president Devyn Dugger wrote in a July 7 Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notice to the state.
Dugger wrote that “all separations will be perament; future employment opportunities, if any, will be communicated by the buyer.”
The layoffs cover Ohio Eagle’s facilities in West Chester and Lima. Ohio Eagle employed 124 workers in West Chester and 54 in Lima, including union members of Teamsters Local 1199 and International Brethren of Teamsters Local 908, respectively.
With the sale, Redwood picks up 7 million cases, Beer Marketer’s Insights first reported earlier this week. Ohio Eagle served 18 counties in western Ohio, distributing Anheuser-Busch, Constellation Brands and Yuengling products, as well as local craft beer.
Redwood, the private investment firm for billionaire Jim Davis, will add to its already vast Ohio Anheuser-Busch InBev (A-B) footprint, which it began building in 2021 with the purchase of Heidelberg Distributing Company. The price tag for Heidelberg, which also covered parts of Kentucky, was reportedly around $1 billion.
Heidelberg operated nine warehouse and office facilities in Cincinnati, Evandale, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Lorain, Toledo, Youngstown and northern Kentucky. In some of its territories, the wholesaler offered A-B products, but it also distributed Coors products in others. Other suppliers varied by territory, including Yuengling, Boston Beer, Heineken, Pabst, Constellation Brands and Mark Anthony Brands.
Ohio Eagle was formed in January 2015 when Col. John Saputo purchased Dickerson Distributing Company, an 81-year-old business. The company grew via more acquisitions, including Clermont Distributing in October 2018 and A-B Sales of Lima, a wholly owned A-B distributorship, in November 2022.
Following the supplier approval process, Ohio Eagle will join a Redwood footprint that began in March 2019 with a $1 billion deal for Houston-based Silver Eagle Distributors, the largest independent distributor of A-B products in the U.S.
Two years later, the company acquired another independent A-B wholesaler, Pepin Distributing in Tampa, Florida. Earlier this year, Redwood acquired a minority stake in Tri-Eagle Sales, which operates across a 16-county territory in North and North Central Florida.