Record 55 acquisitions in November

It felt as if it was a busy month. And so it turned out. The bevblog.net database recorded almost 3 food and drink transactions for every working day of November.

Most were quite small, but there were four deals of scale:

• $1,400 million sales from the packaging merger of UK Chesapeake Services and US Multi Packaging Solutions

• £350 million for the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan to buy UK Burton’s Biscuit

• $489 million for Denmark’s Carlsberg to increase its stake in China’s Chongqing Brewery from 29.7% to 60.0%.

• $472 million for the agreed but not finalised dairy bid by Canada’s Saputo for Australia’s Warrnambool.

Of the 55 total, 11 were in dairy, 9 in packaging and equipment, 8 in alcohol, 8 in soft drinks and 5 in ingredients.

The activity was spread across 30 countries, with the United States involved in 19, the United Kingdom in 10, Australia in 6, New Zealand in 6, Canada in 5, France in 4 and Switzerland in 4.