IDEAL Holdings S.A. is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary Astir Vitogiannis S.A. (“Astir”) has concluded an agreement with The South African Breweries Proprietary Limited (“SAB”), which is owned by AB InBev, to acquire SAB’s controlling interest (60%) in Coleus Packaging Proprietary Limited (“Coleus”).
Coleus (www.coleus.co.za) has production facilities in the Republic of South Africa and supplies crown corks to breweries and beverage companies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Company supplied more than 6.2 billion crowns in 2021 to its clients, including AB InBev, Heineken, Distell, Diageo and Coca Cola.
Coleus (www.coleus.co.za), which employs 140 people had 2021 Sales of ZAR 521.8 mil (EUR 31.4mil), EBITDA ZAR 59.6 mil (EUR 3.6mil) and Net Debt ZAR 120 mil (EUR 7.2 mil). The current exchange rate is 1 EUR = 16.6 ZAR. The transaction will be funded on completion by both equity and local debt financing provided by local banks in ZAR.
Astir and Coleus will have combined sales of 12.5 billion crown corks, and the combination is expected to generate synergies on both costs and revenues via cross selling to clients in different geographies.
By agreement, completion of the transaction is subject to certain customary regulatory approvals, which are expected to be received in the next few months.
The Chair of IDEAL Holdings Mr. Lampros Papakonstantinou commented: “We look forward to completing the acquisition of Coleus and to welcoming the Coleus employees to our family. Astir is becoming an international player, which was the goal we set together with Mr. Stylianos Vitogiannis when we invested in Astir. The Coleus acquisition is EPS accretive, will double the size of Astir and will create value for IDEAL Holdings. We will provide more detailed information following the announcement on 31 March 2022 of our 2021 financial results.”.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) acted as exclusive Financial Advisor to Ideal Holdings for the transaction through its Greek and South African offices. Reed Smith acted as the Legal advisor to IDEAL Holdings and ENSafrica acted as the legal advisor in South Africa for IDEAL Holdings.
