Dutch buyer takes coffee, Bell Tea
Well-known Kiwi brands Bell Tea and Hummingbird Coffee will soon grace the tables of overseas consumers as the company prepares for a new export future under a foreign owner.
Netherlands company Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) paid more than $100 million for Brewgroup, which also owns Jed’s Coffee, Gravity Coffee and Tiora Tea, as well as Bell, and Christchurchbased Hummingbird.
The Overseas Investment Office approved the sale by Brewgroup’s former shareholders Pencarrow Private Equity and Brewgroup chief executive Mark Hamilton.
Hamilton said Brewgroup would become part of the world’s second largest coffee company, offering international marketing opportunities when the businesses were integrated after February.
For example, Brewgroup recently launched coffee bean bags in Australia and would now sell them in other countries through the international network of JDE, a subsidiary of Netherlands-based JAB Holdings.
Hamilton said there would also be local efficiencies with JDE using the Brewgroup distribution warehouse in Auckland for its Moccona freeze-dried coffee.
The merged business would employ more than 250 people, most of them based in East Tamaki in Auckland, plus the Hummingbird coffee business in Christchurch.
The former Bell Tea Company, established in Dunedin in 1895, was sold to Pencarrow Equity in late 2013 by Foodstuffs.
Bell Tea then acquired Hummingbird Coffee in early 2016 and the group’s name was changed to Brewgroup as coffee sales outstripped tea sales.
The ownership changes illustrate Pencarrow Equity’s strategy of investing in well-known brands for expansion and possible sale.
Other companies under investment by Pencarrow include clothing brand Icebreaker, Umbreller software, geological modelling company ARANZ, Solarcity, and Begroup retirement villages.