News

Hot on the heels of the sale of Brookes Avana, our client, Premier Foods, has signed an agreement with The Boyne Valley Group to sell its four Irish Brands comprising Chivers, Gateaux, McDonnells and the Erin licence for a gross cash consideration of €41.4 million. This sale underlines Premier’s determination to focus on its power brands to help restore profitable growth quickly.

There will be a short transition period in which Premier Foods will continue to support The Boyne Valley Group while it integrates the Irish Brands into its portfolio. In addition, Premier Foods and The Boyne Valley Group have entered into manufacturing agreements within which Premier Foods will continue to manufacture the Irish Brands for three years.

Our client, Premier Foods, has announced the disposal of the Brookes Avana business, comprising RF Brookes chilled foods and Avana Bakeries, to the 2 Sisters Food Group, for a cash consideration of £30 million. In selling this predominantly private label chilled business, Premier Foods has taken an important step in streamlining its portfolio to focus investment behind its leading grocery brands.

A transition service agreement covering IT, Procurement and Technical has been signed enabling Premier Foods to support 2 Sisters while it integrates Brookes Avana. They have also signed manufacturing agreements relating to certain products currently produced by the Brookes Avana business.

Our client, Jacob Fruitfield Food Group, announced that it is combining with Valeo Foods, an investee company of CapVest, to create the largest grocery food group in the Republic of Ireland.

The merged group will own and/or licence leading brands such as Jacob’s, Batchelors, Odlums, Chef, Fruitfield, etc and will have a combined turnover of €300m.

Tangerine Confectionery announced the acquisition of the company by funds advised by Blackstone together with significant reinvestment by management. We advised the management team.

We have had a long association with Tangerine. We advised the management team on the initial acquisition of Toms Confectionery (UK) in 2006 and arranged integrated finance from Growth Capital Partners (formerly Close Brothers Growth Capital). We subsequently advised Tangerine on the acquisitions of Burtons Confectionery and Monkhill Confectionery from Cadbury Schweppes for which we also arranged the debt financing from Bank of Scotland.

Our client, Premier Foods, has announced the proposed disposal of its canning activities to Princes, a unit of Mitsubishi Corporation, for £182 million.

The carve out of these activities involved a number of different agreements including a transfer of business assets, a logistics agreement, a services agreement, production agreements and licences on several of the UK’s largest grocery brands. The transaction completed on 23 July 2011.