Oghma Partners' latest T2 Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) Review of the UK Food and Beverage Sector has recorded two significant deals within the meat industry: BRF Invicta’s purchase of Universal Meats (UK) Ltd and Cranswick’s purchase of CCL Holdings (Crown).
Global food company BRF Invicta Ltd acquired Universal Meats (UK) Ltd for £34 million in February of this year.
Meanwhile in April, Cranswick acquired the whole of the issued share capital of integrated poultry producer CCL Holdings Ltd and its 100% owned subsidiary Crown Chicken Ltd for £40 million.
At the time Adam Counch, CEO of Cranswick, said: “Crown is a well-respected operator in the UK poultry sector and represents an excellent opportunity for Cranwick to continue the development of its UK poultry business.
“This acquisition represents important progress in our long term growth strategy of developing new product channels in both pork and other proteins.”
In total the acquisitions by BRF Invicta and Cranswick totalled £74 million.
In the review Oghma Partners also commented on the impact of Brexit on mergers and acquisitions across the wider food and beverage industry in the future.
The company said: “The full impact of the Brexit vote may not yet be visible. Many of the transactions completed in the second tertial of 2016 would have been worked on before the vote with just the completion occurring after.
“The next tertial and the first tertial of 2017 are likely to provide more insight into the thinking and strategies of the business leaders as we begin to see how great the appetite for domestic and cross-border investment in the UK is.
“Building new channels and markets will take time and may not be that easy for UK food products given the logic that if it had been easy in the first instance wouldn’t these markets already be penetrated.
“For domestically focused businesses, however, the impact of Brexit is unlikely to be material. The UK is still a big market and its consumer base therefore attractive to foreign investor – arguably assets are ‘cheaper’ as sterling has fallen and in addition competitive imports more expensive - so after the initial aftershock international firms are still likely to be interested in domestically focused assets."
The review takes into account acquisitions up to 31st August 2016 and therefore does not take into account the Boparan Private Office acquisition of Bernard Matthews.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
