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Canadian Drink Producer buys Lancaster Warehouse to Expand

A Canadian maker of protein supplement drinks has acquired an industrial warehouse and six-acre property in Lancaster, paying $1.81 million for the former home of Bauer Radiator on Walden Avenue.

Bob Veal Corp. bought the vacant 15-year-old facility at 3805 Walden from Dover LP, as well as some fixtures and equipment for an additional undisclosed sum. The 61,500-square-foot building includes six loading docks, 26-foot ceilings, 150 parking spaces and about 7,500 square feet of office space.

Bob Veal is registered to Jurianus “Jerry” Bartelse, the Dutch-born founder, owner and chief operating officer of Grober Group, a privately held conglomerate of agricultural companies based in Cambridge, Ont., that raise and develop dairy bull calves, process and supply veal to stores, and make animal feed.

Its companies include feed maker Grober Nutrition, veal supplier and meat packer Delft Blue, and processed meats firm Provitello.com and Provitello Farms as well as NutraBlend Foods, a contract maker of whey protein drink mixes and other blends for other manufacturers that in turn supply them to retailers such as GNC.

NutraBlend is based in Canada but opened a U. S. filling and distribution facility at 790 Aero Drive in Cheektowaga a year ago, with 17 employees currently. The company has been producing the mixes there since January, effectively doubling NutraBlend’s filling capacity.

It has already outgrown that 20,000-square-foot building, however, and will be moving that operation to the larger Walden Avenue location by year’s end, said Paul Francis, the company’s U. S. operations manager, who joined the firm to open the U. S. plant last October.

“It’s a really exciting opportunity because it brings jobs into Buffalo,” Francis said. “We did not have a location in Buffalo prior to October of last year, and to see it grow to where we are now is very exciting. We look forward to continued growth.”

NutraBlend does not sell any products under its own name, although it does make the OmegaWhey drink that it produces and distributes out of Canada. Instead, it primarily takes other companies’ formulas, makes their drinks under contract for them, bottles them, packages the bottles into cases, and ships them back to the customers for distribution to stores.

The U. S. operation does only the bottling, packaging and shipping, not the manufacturing, Francis said. He would not divulge the names of Nutra- Blend’s customers, who sell the products under their brands.

As for Bauer, the 65-year-old radiator and auto repair business was sold in August by longtime owner Bill O’Brien after a decade of dwindling business, said Rick Recckio, the commercial real estate broker who handled the transaction with his wife, Tammy.

jepstein@buffnews.com