European ready meals and cold cuts business What’s Cooking? is to acquire French peer Sveltic.
What’s Cooking? plans to buy Sveltic from French retail group Les Mousquetaires, the owner of the Intermarché chain, for an estimated €35m ($36.1m).
The move comes three months after What’s Cooking?, based in Belgium, announced its intention to invest in its ready meals business, partly through acquisitions.
At the same time, the company revealed it was in talks with a potential buyer for its cold-cuts business.
Sveltic, which has a production facility close to Rennes, has a turnover of €50m from a product portfolio encompassing frozen and chilled ready meals, What’s Cooking? said.
In a statement, What’s Cooking? said it is expected the transaction will be finalised in the first half of 2025, subject to regulatory approvals.
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The company also confirmed that is “on track” with its disposal of its SBU Savoury cold cuts business.
Last March, What’s Cooking? revealed it had started a process to explore a sale of its savoury unit in Belgium and its subsidiaries in the Netherlands, UK and Germany, which produce, slice and sell savoury cold cuts.
In October, the company said it was in talks with German investment group Aurelius over a possible deal for SBU Savoury, which represented €464m of the €832m consolidated turnover of What’s Cooking? for the 2023 financial year.
Piet Sanders, CEO of What’s Cooking?, said at the time: “At What’s Cooking? we want to accelerate the organic growth of our SBU [strategic business unit] ready meals business, both under our own and private-label brands, by investing and through potential acquisitions.
“We are confident that the strong fundamentals of SBU savoury will continue to flourish under the future ownership of Aurelius. Their focus on operational value creation and their approach of combining bespoke advisory with proven methods to reduce complexity in carve-outs convinced us that we have chosen the right partner.”
