CK Snacks (Cheeze Kurls, LLC) has acquired Keystone Food Products, Inc., a snack food manufacturer and co-packer based in Easton, Pennsylvania, the company announced on March 25, 2026. The acquisition adds a third manufacturing facility to the CK Snacks platform, which now comprises CK Snacks in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Axium Foods in Illinois; and Keystone in Eastern Pennsylvania.
According to CK Snacks’s announcement, Keystone will continue operating from its Easton facility while CK Snacks leverages shared capabilities across sales, finance, procurement, and operations. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
CK Snacks was founded in 1964 and is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Keystone Food Products was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Easton, Pennsylvania.
What Keystone Brings to the Platform
Keystone is a specialized snack co-manufacturer with a product capability set that meaningfully complements CK Snacks’ existing Michigan operations and Axium Foods’ Illinois footprint. According to the announcement, Keystone’s manufacturing capabilities span masa and cooked corn tortilla chips, corn chips, baked and fried extruded snacks, die-cut and random-shaped snacks, party mixes, pellets, and natural and organic snack lines.
The masa and cooked corn tortilla chip capability is particularly notable. This is a distinct, high-capital manufacturing process — masa requires nixtamalization, precision cooking, and forming technology that differs substantially from extruded snack production. Keystone’s eight decades of experience in this format gives CK Snacks a tortilla chip and corn chip production capability it did not previously operate at scale, making the combined platform more competitive for retailer private label bids that span multiple snack categories simultaneously.
“Build Out Both Our Geographic Reach and Our Portfolio”
Jamie Colbourne, CEO of CK Snacks, framed the acquisition around two growth dimensions.
“We are very excited about the addition of Keystone to our snacking platform. This acquisition helps build out both our geographic reach and our portfolio of products, allowing us to better serve our customers and continue our growth trajectory,” Colbourne stated in the company’s announcement.
The geographic framing is precise. CK Snacks’ Michigan facility and Axium Foods in Illinois both serve the Midwest and national retail distribution networks. Keystone’s Eastern Pennsylvania facility shifts the platform’s physical footprint toward the dense Northeast retail corridor — closer to major grocery distribution hubs serving New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the mid-Atlantic region. For retailers and branded food companies running private label programs that require fast replenishment to East Coast distribution centers, this is a meaningful logistics improvement over a Midwest-only manufacturing base.
Three-Facility Private Label Snack Platform: Why This Acquisition Matters
The CK Snacks acquisition of Keystone is a textbook private label snack manufacturing consolidation play, and it carries clear implications for the broader snack co-manufacturing landscape.
Scale and geographic coverage are the primary competitive moats in private label snack co-packing. Retailers managing large private label snack programs prefer co-manufacturing partners who can handle volume surges, offer multi-format capability under one commercial relationship, and ship efficiently to regional distribution centers. A three-facility platform spanning Michigan, Illinois, and Pennsylvania gives CK Snacks the ability to serve national retail programs with fewer logistics constraints than a single-facility competitor.
Masa and tortilla chip capability is a high-barrier co-manufacturing category. The equipment and process knowledge required to produce masa-based tortilla chips at commercial scale is not interchangeable with standard extruded snack production. By acquiring Keystone, CK Snacks gains access to a category that is growing at grocery retail — tortilla chips are one of the largest snack categories by dollar sales in the U.S. — without the capital investment and ramp time of building that capability organically.
Natural and organic snack lines expand the platform’s retailer audience. Keystone’s natural and organic snack capability allows the combined CK Snacks platform to serve specialty and natural grocery retailers alongside conventional mass-market channels. For ingredient importers and bulk suppliers of organic corn, non-GMO masa, and natural flavoring systems, the expansion of Keystone’s natural and organic production under a larger, better-capitalized ownership structure signals sustained and potentially growing demand.
Pellet manufacturing is a strategic asset. Pellets — the shelf-stable, par-cooked snack substrates that are later fried or baked by co-manufacturers or retail operators — are a growing segment of the snack supply chain used by third-party frying operations, foodservice operators, and international distributors. Keystone’s pellet capability gives CK Snacks an additional B2B revenue stream beyond traditional finished-goods private label production.
FAQs
- What is CK Snacks? CK Snacks, operating as Cheeze Kurls, LLC, is a Grand Rapids, Michigan-based private label snack food manufacturer founded in 1964. Its products include fried and baked extruded snacks, popcorn, and natural and organic snack lines. Prior to this acquisition, its platform also included Axium Foods, an Illinois-based private label snack manufacturer.
- What is Keystone Food Products? Keystone Food Products, Inc. was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Easton, Pennsylvania. It is a snack food manufacturer and co-packer specializing in masa and cooked corn tortilla chips, corn chips, baked and fried extruded snacks, die-cut and random-shaped snacks, party mixes, pellets, and natural and organic snack lines.
- Will Keystone continue to operate as before? According to the announcement, Keystone will continue operating from its Easton, Pennsylvania facility. CK Snacks will leverage shared capabilities in sales, finance, procurement, and operations across the combined platform.
- How many facilities does the CK Snacks platform now operate? Three — CK Snacks in Grand Rapids, Michigan; Axium Foods in Illinois; and Keystone Food Products in Easton, Pennsylvania.
About Source86
The CK Snacks acquisition of Keystone Food Products underscores the growing consolidation in private label snack co-manufacturing and the sustained wholesale demand for masa, corn-based snack ingredients, extruded snack starches, and natural and organic snack components that power multi-format private label programs at national retail scale. At Source86, we connect snack manufacturers, private label operators, and co-packers with trusted bulk and wholesale suppliers of corn-based ingredients, masa flour, natural flavoring systems, organic snack substrates, and specialty snack pellets that fuel innovation and growth across the private label snack category.
Whether your production team is sourcing bulk masa or corn flour for tortilla chip manufacturing, procuring natural and organic snack ingredients for a co-pack program, or developing a new private label snack line for retail distribution, Source86 is your bridge to the right manufacturing and supply chain partners. Contact Source86 today to start your sourcing search.
