News

Frutarom acquires SA flavours company

13 Feb 2017

Frutarom has acquired Unique Flavors of South Africa for $6.7 million

Unique’s sales volume in the 12 months ending January 31, 2017 amounted to approx. $9 million.

Frutarom acquires SA flavours company

Frutarom has acquired Unique Flavors of South Africa for $6.7 million

Unique’s sales volume in the 12 months ending January 31, 2017 amounted to approx. $9 million. The company, which was founded in 2001, engages in the development, production and marketing of flavours, with emphasis on savoury flavours (the non-sweet spectrum of flavours) and on sweet taste solutions.

Unique, which is said to have grown in recent years at a rapid pace, has an R&D, production and marketing site in Pretoria, South Africa, near Frutarom’s new South African site, and a customer base in South Africa and other emerging markets of the Sub-Saharan region including Ghana, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. It has a workforce of 64 people and its activity is described as synergistic with Frutarom’s flavours activity in Africa which the company says has grown in recent years at a substantial pace surpassing the rate of market growth.

Frutarom said it will work towards merging the activities, including combining the R&D, sales and marketing, purchasing, production and supply platforms. The management of Unique will be integrated into Frutarom’s management in Africa.

The acquisition of Unique is Frutarom’s second acquisition in Africa and follows the acquisition in 2013 of the flavours company JannDeRee. In recent years, Frutarom says it has also made efforts at expanding its activity in Africa on the basis of its manufacturing infrastructure and its local and global R&D and marketing capabilities while capitalizing on the synergies generated by the acquisition that had been made.

Last year, Frutarom inaugurated a modern state-of-the-art production plant and R&D centre in Johannesburg, South Africa to serve the growing markets of the region.

"The acquisition of Unique is the continuation of the implementation of Frutarom's rapid and profitable growth strategy and the realization of its vision 'to be the preferred partner for tasty and healthy success,'” said Ori Yehudai, President and CEO of Frutarom Group. “The acquisition will contribute towards significantly strengthening our positioning in the rapidly growing regions of Africa, expanding the supply of our products to African countries and reinforcing our management and our R&D, production, sales and marketing capabilities. We intend to combine Unique’s R&D and sales and marketing platform in Africa with Frutarom’s global R&D and sales and marketing platform in order to realize and leverage the abundant cross-selling opportunities between their activities. We also intend to capitalize on the synergies and savings made available by combining Unique’s activity with Frutarom’s existing activity in South Africa.”

"We are working on seeking out and executing additional acquisitions of companies and activities in our fields of activity, with special focus on high-growth markets in Asia, Central and South America, Central and Eastern Europe and in Africa, with the share of our sales in emerging markets having grown from 27% in 2010 to over 40% in 2016. We will continue carrying out our rapid profitable growth strategy, which is based on combining profitable internal growth and strategic acquisitions, in order to achieve the targets we recently set: sales of at least US$ 2 billion with an EBITDA margin of over 22% in our core activities by the year 2020.”