Richard Hall is chairman of Zenith International. This is a personal blog and views expressed are his own.
2014 ended with 41 more food and drink industry transactions recorded on the bevblog.net database for December, but only one of these exceeded $500m.
This was the $1,300m ingredients purchase of US Archer Daniels Midland’s cocoa business by Singapore’s Olam international. Olam also spent $176m on another US business McCleskey Mills.
The next biggest was €178m for US Keurig Green Mountain to buy the remaining 85% of Malta’s Bevyz dispense system business.
Of the 41 monthly total, 9 were in alcohol, 6 in soft drinks, 5 in dairy, 5 in ingredients and 4 in packaging.
19 involved the United States, followed by France on 5 and Mexico on 4, then Australia, Canada, Switzerland and the United Kingdom on 3 each. All 4 Mexico transactions were purchases. All 3 Canada transactions were sales.
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