61 acquisitions in April

April saw several large scale food and drink industry transactions among the 61 recorded on the bevblog.net mergers and acquisitions database.

7 amounted to more than $500 million, with 3 of these topping $1,000 million:

• $9,500 million for China’s Alibaba to buy the Ele.me food delivery service.

• $4,200 million for US based Procter & Gamble to purchase German based Merck’s consumer health unit.

• $1,320 million for Canada’s Transcontinental to take on the Coveris Americas packaging business from US based Sun Capital Partners.

Alcohol was the most popular sector with 13 deals, followed by soft drinks on 6, with nutrition and services on 5 each, ingredients and packaging on 4, then plant-based and seafood on 3.

27 occurred within single countries, including 15 in the United States, and 34 were international.

30 of the 61 total featured the United States, followed by 8 for the United Kingdom, then 5 for Australia, Canada, France and Spain.