Ori Yehudai, president and CEO of Frutarom Group. (File photo)
HERZLIYA, ISRAEL: Frutarom Industries Ltd said that it has signed an agreement to purchase 100 percent shares of Sagema GmbH of Austria and Wiberg GmbH of Germany, for approx $130 million (including Wiberg’s 50 percent ownership share in a Canadian subsidiary and 51 percent ownership share in a Turkish company).
Frutarom expects the acquisition will be granted at the beginning of 2016.
Wiberg employs some 670 personnel throughout the world and operates five production sites, the largest of which is a modern and efficient state-of-theart facility in Germany with extensive production capacity and substantial room for expansion, and in Austria, Turkey, Canada, and Los Angeles in US. The company has sales and marketing platforms in some 70 countries, with a presence in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.
Wiberg's activity is largely synergetic with Frutarom's global savoury activity and will enable Frutarom to reinforce its supply of savory products, with emphasis on the growing field of culinary solutions
Frutarom will also take steps to maximize the reaping of operational synergies between its own activities and those of Wiberg in the various countries in order to achieve operational efficiencies and maximal savings estimated at more than $12 million (on an annual basis), most of which will already be attained over the coming year and partly during 2017.
Wiberg president and CEO, Marcus Winkler, who is third generation to the company’s founders, will continue to guide the company as a consultant and contribute towards the Wiberg and Frutarom businesses merger.
“The Wiberg acquisition is the largest strategic acquisition we have carried out so far and the first we’ll be carrying through in 2016,” said Ori Yehudai, president and CEO of Frutarom Group.
“In the past four years we have nearly doubled our sales while more than doubling our profits. The acquisition of Wiberg which joins the 12 acquisitions we made this year already brings us to an annual rate of $1.1 billion in sales. We will continue carrying out additional strategic acquisitions of companies and operations in our fields of activity, with special emphasis on activities with high growth rates,” he said.
“Following intensive analysis of our strengthening competitive position and our pipeline for future acquisitions, we are pleased to update and boost our sales target for the year 2020 to $2 billion with an EBITDA margin of over 22 percent in our core activities,” concluded Yehudai.
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