Nov 18, 2021
CVC agrees €4.5bn deal to acquire Unilever tea business
CVC Capital Partners has agreed to buy Unilever's tea division for €4.5bn after beating rival private equity groups Advent and Carlyle to a business that is home to PG Tips and Lipton. It has been a drag on Unilever's growth as consumers in developed countries switched to coffee, herbal tea and alternatives such as kombucha. The business changing hands, now named Ekaterra, has about €2bn of annual revenues, but Unilever has opted to keep parts of its tea division which generate another roughly €1bn of sales, including the businesses in India and Indonesia, where consumption is rising and where tea forms part of listed subsidiaries of the consumer goods group. The consumer goods group is also keeping an iced tea partnership with PepsiCo, but upmarket and herbal tea brands such as Pukka, T2 and Tazo will join Ekaterra, which will also own three large tea plantations in east Africa. These plantations give the spin-off company direct involvement in an industry with a history of low wages and human rights abuses, though Unilever says it has multiple schemes to address "Social problems" in tea production.
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