Too soon to say for sure, but Tuesday’s announcement of Kommunity Brew’s acquisition of Cool Cool Beverage Company, breathed life into the moribund Australian Food & Beverage business sale market.
Publicised F&B mergers & acquisitions 2023 year to date have declined 63% compared to the equivalent periods in 2021 and 2022 for SME’s. Adding insult to injury, many of those acquisitions involved distressed business such as Voly, Coffex, Milkrun, Shima Wasabi and Kaddy.
Food & Beverage business owners, many of whom planned an exit after the stresses of the pandemic, now find themselves tied to their businesses for longer. Food sales are barely keeping pace with CPI, producers fear passing increased costs onto consumers and the economy remains uncertain, with successive interest rate hikes.
But is there hope? Absolutely. Acquisition of existing F&B businesses remains the ultimate fast track to growth. Australian F&B remain some of the most innovative in the world and in recognition of that, larger F&B businesses continue searching for quality acquisitions. Their criteria? Innovation, a geographical footprint, range expansion or diversification and access to new channels or customers.
In the light of this, the winners will be those F&B business owners who grow their bottom lines while aligning themselves to consumer concerns such as wellness, sustainable sourcing and packaging, interesting innovation and a transparent supply chain.
Mark Ostryn
