Total Produce pays €21m dividend to parent company Dole

Total Produce, the Dublin-headquartered subsidiary of the largest supplier of fresh fruit and vegetables in the world, paid a €21 million dividend to its parent company Dole in 2022, its first full-year since floating on the New York Stock Exchange.

Originally a spin-off of Irish fruit company Fyffes, Total Produce acquired its rival Dole Produce in July 2021, debuting on Wall Street shortly thereafter.

Total Produce is now an investment company within the group that holds shares in subsidiary undertakings, including a property holding company and the Irish parent entity of Total Produce USA Holdings.

Accounts filed recently for Total Produce show that it paid a €21 million dividend to Dole after receiving dividends in excess of €24.5 million from its subsidiaries.

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Turnover at the company, which had no employees in the year, increased from €14.9 million in 2021 to more than €20.7 million due to an increase in income from its financial assets.

The complex transaction that created Dole had to be cleared by the European Commission in 2021, which noted that both companies are active in the fresh produce supply industry – Total Produce as an importer and distributor and Dole as a producer and distributor of fresh fruit and vegetables.

“The commission concluded that the proposed merger would raise no competition concerns, as Total Produce already had joint control over Dole, and the commission reviewed and accepted a set of remedies on that transaction,” it said.

In January, Dole sold its fresh vegetables division to a subsidiary of US fruit group Chiquita for about $293 million (€270 million).

Dole’s revenues topped $2.1 billion in the three months to the end of June, an increase of 4.4 per cent on the same period last year, according to its most recent set of quarterly results.

In a statement, chairman Carl McCann said the group’s performance over the first half of the year “gives us confidence in achieving our targeted [adjusted earnings] for the full year of at least $350 million.”