March 28 2022 – Heartwood Partners is pleased to announce that All American Label & Packaging (“AALP”) has merged with Western Shield Label and Packaging (“Western Shield”), a leading provider of pressure-sensitive prime labels and packaging solutions to the food & beverage, health & beauty, and industrials sectors. Western Shield and AALP’s highest quality standards and advanced operations across California, Texas, Ohio, and Tennessee are ideally positioned to service customers nationwide.
“AALP complements Western Shield in many ways,” says Nizar Elias, Chief Executive Officer, Western Shield, adding “AALP serves similar and adjacent end markets such wine and spirits, and will allow us to extend our manufacturing footprint into the Southeast. We are excited about this merger and our combined ability to provide even greater service and expertise to our combined customers.”
“We are excited to join forces with the deep bench of wonderful and talented people at Western Shield. We have evaluated several opportunities in the market, and none had the kind of sales and operational synergies we see here,” commented Brad Brown, Founder, All American Label & Packaging.
“We were pleased to support AALP and Western Shield with this transformational merger,” said Demetrios Dounis, Managing Director, Heartwood Partners. “The combination of these businesses makes tremendous sense and creates a number of ways for them to win. Our unique equity-rich capital structure resonated with the management teams and owners of both AALP and Western Shield. Moving forward we anticipate the combined businesses will remain active acquirers in the pressure sensitive labels space.”
To learn more about All American Label & Packaging visit www.allamericanlabel.net. To learn more about Western Shield please visit www.westernshield.com.
Heartwood Partners is focused on partnering with family and management-owners. Our strategy is focused on providing strategic and financial guidance, human resources development, marketing and eCommerce expertise, and operational assistance to support long-term growth, including organic and acquisition-driven expansion into new products, services, and end markets. Please visit the Heartwood Partners website at (www.heartwoodpartners.com) to review our approach and investment portfolio.
Please contact the following members of the investment team at Heartwood Partners with investment or add-on opportunities:
Demetrios Dounis, Managing Director
John Willert, Managing Director
JWillert@heartwoodpartners.com
John Newman, Principal
Ron Ahuja, Vice President