Sioux Center-based Versova Holdings and two other major egg producers have agreed to settle an antitrust lawsuit alleging the three companies engaged in an almost three-year-long conspiracy to inflate the wholesale price of eggs, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Tuesday. The lawsuit was filed by the Antitrust Division of the DOJ and 17 states, including Iowa.
“These settlements resolve years of conduct that dragged on Americans’ finances and their everyday lives,” Omeed Assefi, former acting assistant general in Antitrust Division, said in a statement.
Versova Holdings is a limited liability company incorporated in Delaware but headquartered in Sioux Center. It owns Trillium Farms, which it runs through Versova Management Cooperative. The company also manages farms for Centrum Valley Holdings, another LLC incorporated in Delaware but headquartered in Sioux Center.
The other two companies charged in the DOJ lawsuit are Cal-Maine Foods of Ridgeland, Mississippi and Hickman’s Egg Ranch Inc., based in Buckeye, Arizona.
The complaint filed by the DOJ and the 17 states alleges the three companies engaged in a scheme to artificially inflate the wholesale prices tracked by the Egg Index of Urner Barry, a company that reports the wholesale price of eggs on a daily basis. The price quotations reported by the index are used to set the wholesale prices restaurants, grocery stores and other retail outlets pay.
“Every year, billions of eggs are sold with prices based on Urner Barry’s price quotations,” according to the DOJ.
The scheme involved illegal coordinated bidding on eggs by the three companies designed to drive up the wholesale prices as reported by Urner Barry. The companies have contracts with retailers that set what they are paid for their product according to the Egg Index, so higher reported prices increased company profits. It wasn’t necessary for the companies to actually buy the eggs they bid on to drive up the wholesale prices reported by the index.
In March 2025, when the companies became aware they were being investigated by the DOJ, they stopped the coordinated bidding and “egg price quotations dropped significantly.”
None of the companies admitted to wrongdoing, but as part of the settlement announced Tuesday, Versova, Cal-Maine and Hickman’s agreed to refrain from colluding to inflate egg prices, pay $3.3 million and donate 53 million eggs to the plaintiffs.
According to a statement from the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, “the state of Iowa will receive $89,931” from the settlement. As for the eggs, the “specific distribution of the egg donation is currently being negotiated.”
