General Mills to sell its North American yogurt business, including Yoplait, for $2.1 billion

General Mills is selling its North American yogurt business — including its once dominant Yoplait brand — for $2.1 billion after years of weakening sales and eroding market share.

The Golden Valley-based packaged food giant helped bring yogurt to the American masses in the late 1970s with Yoplait. But by the early 2010s, Yoplait went into a long-term decline as new yogurt varieties, particularly Greek style, muscled their way into the dairy aisle.

The sale includes brands Yoplait, Liberté, Go-Gurt, Oui, Ratio and Mountain High, as well as manufacturing facilities in Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Reed City, Mich.; and Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec.

General Mills’ North American Yogurt business contributed about $1.5 billion to the company’s net sales of $20 billion in fiscal year 2024, or about 7.5%. That’s down from fiscal year 2020, when the same business tallied $2.01 billion in revenue, 11.7% of total sales, federal securities filings show.

This yogurt sale is a key step in the company’s portfolio reshaping — which is industry parlance for making over its mix of brands and products.

“Upon completion of these divestitures, we will have turned over nearly 30 percent of our net sales base since fiscal 2018,” General Mills Chief Executive Jeff Harmening said in a news release.

Harmening added that the company is focused on its brands with the greatest global potential as well as customer favorite “gem brands” at the local level, which have a better prospect for growth and larger profit margins.