Yesterday the American company Ferrara announced the acquisition of the Brazilian Dori alimentos. The deal is expected to be closed by the end of the year.
Ferrara, part of the Ferrero Group since 2017, is a large player in the confectionery field (mainly with gummies and chews) and this acquisition will allow the company to enter the Brazilian market , as reported in several articles. Here you have a link to one of them: www.just-food.com and it is also announced on Ferrara’s website
We knew that Mondelez had divestment plans for its gum business, but today appeared a press release announcing that Perfetti Van Melle is the company that is going to take over this part of the business. The production plants in US and Poland, and all the famous brands such as Trident, Dentyne, Bubalooo, etc will be now (pending of authorization from Authorities) part of the Italian player.
Mondelez keeps its gum business in other parts of the world (the factories in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand … and specially China, come to my mind)
It is interesting that some of these brands became part of Mondelez coming from the acquisition of Cadbury, and looking further back in time, we will find Warner Lambert and… Adams! Now, will be part of Perfetti in these markets. So, I wonder, are we going to see a Trident made by Perfetti in Europe and a Trident made by Mondelez in, let’s say South America? That’s going to be interesting.
I’d like to share with you the press release informing about the acquisition of Gabler Engineering by Coperion. Gabler has been for many years one of the main suppliers if machinery to the chewing gum industry (but also the wider confectionery and food industry and even pharma). Now will be under the umbrella of the extrusion experts (encompassing other fields away from food and chewing gum) of Coperion.
Some days ago the Brazilian gum base producer Sweet Gum (I posted about them in the past) reached an agreement to acquire the leading gum base supplier world-wide, Cafosa, from Mars. The deal is pending approval from the Authorities, so probably we will hear an official communication about this matter once it is completed.
Cafosa, which is part of Mars, was showing red figures for the last years. Negative financial results, loss of customers and poor performance might be some of the reasons (among others) that led Mars to take this move.
I look forward to see how this changes the game in the gum base sector. I worked for 12 years in Cafosa and I have seen the changes and transformation of the company from a family-owned Catalan SME (Mr Carulla founded the company within the General de Confiteria -later Joyco- Group) to being absorbed by Wrigley and later being part of Mars. Now starts a new era within an environment that has been hit by the Covid19 pandemic and with a decline of chewing gum consumption in many countries.
Today in the news we can see about the merger of these two giants, which will result in an even larger company, active in the fields of nutrition, flavours and fragances.
I am sure many chewing gum producers worldwide are using, or have used Firmenich flavours at some stage- I do not know how this will affect them on short and long term. I can just say that, personally, I do not think mergers are good news, generally speaking. For sure, the potential of the new company will be huge (I am thinking on R&D potential, production capabilities,…) and I can just hope that this will be for the benefit of the customers.