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Grupo Bimbo  announced that it has completed its acquisition of Sara Lee Corporation´s  fresh bakery business in Spain and Portugal for 115 million EUR. The acquisition includes bread, pastries and snacks produced under the Bimbo, Silueta, Ortíz, Martinez and Eagle brands, among others.

The business employs more than 1’900 associates, operates seven production facilities and manages more than 800 distribution routes. In fiscal 2011, the business generated net sales of 408 million USD. This acquisition positions Grupo Bimbo as the leading branded bread company on the Iberian Peninsula and enhances the Company´s international growth with a strong and established bakery business.

This transaction was funded with cash holdings. The financial results of Spain and Portugal fresh bakery business will be included in Grupo Bimbo´s consolidated results starting on December 04, 2011.

Source: Bakenet:eu

Companies Grupo Bimbo, Sara Lee Corporation

Grupo Bimbo  S.A.B. de C.V. formalized three operations that will point its integration into different areas on two continents, expanding the company´s global vision and consolidating its leadership in the world bakery industry. During a press conference, Daniel Servitje Grupo Bimbo´s CEO, noted «all three commercial operations accomplish the Company´s development expectations and give us the opportunity to create value, meanwhile allowing us to enhance our experience we have acquired over 65 years». These three commercial operations were announced as follows:

On September 19th Argentine authorities granted Grupo Bimbo final authorization to complete the acquisition of Compañía de Alimentos Fargo, the main bread producer and distributor in the Republic of Argentina.

On October 10th, Grupo Bimbo signed an agreement with Sara Lee Corporation to acquire its bakery division in Spain and Portugal: Bimbo España, a leader in the packaged bread market on the Iberian Peninsula.

On October 21st, Grupo Bimbo announced that the Department of Justice of the United States granted it authorization to complete the acquisition of the Sara Lee bakery division in the US.

Guillermo Quiroz, Corporate Finance and Administration Director for Grupo Bimbo, informed that once all three operations are formalized, the Company will show important growths in its figures; in example, as of now 154 production plants, 126’200 associates, 50’300 distribution routes and presence in 19 countries on three continents. Thus, final sales for the Group will grow 27 percent, of which 62 percent will come from international market sources.

Grupo Bimbo will continue doing solid and profitable business on the American continent, as Sara Lee and Fargo operations will reinforce its presence in the US and Latin American markets, respectively. Meanwhile the purchase agreement for the Sara Lee bakery division in Spain, will give the Company presence on the Iberian Peninsula to penetrate the European market.

This announcement is made in the midst of a complex climate in global markets, however it sends a positive message and states Grupo Bimbo´s confidence in renewing its vision of leadership in the bakery industry.

Daniel Servitje concluded, «We recognize the challenges posed by the different markets in a global economy, but we are certain of the strategic benefits Grupo Bimbo will derive from being present on three continents and leveraging itself as a global company with millions of consumers who enjoy its vast product portfolio».

About: Grupo Bimbo  is the leading company in the global bakery industry. It has more than 109’000 associates. In 2010, it sold 117,16 billion Mexican Pesos. It has 102 plants in 17 countries that produce more than 7’000 products under more than 150 brands in categories such as sliced bread, rolls and toasted bread. Additionally the Mexican bakery group maintains one of the largest distribution networks in the world – more than 43’000 routes.

Source: Bakenet EU

Companies Grupo Bimbo

Sara Lee announced an agreement to sell its fresh bakery businesses in Spain and Portugal to Mexico´s Grupo Bimbo. The agreement includes all Sara Lee fresh bakery brands in Spain and Portugal as well as seven manufacturing facilities.

Sara Lee Corporation  announced an agreement to sell its fresh bakery businesses in Spain and Portugal to Mexico´s Grupo Bimbo  S.A.B. de C.V. for 115 million EUR in cash (about 154 million USD at current exchange rates). The agreement includes all Sara Lee fresh bakery brands in Spain and Portugal as well as seven manufacturing facilities. The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory clearance, is expected to close within 60 days.

Sara Lee holds the number-one position among branded bakery manufacturers in Spain, with leading brands such as Bimbo, Martinez, Ortiz and Silueta. In fiscal 2011, the business generated net sales of 408 million USD. It employs +/- 2’000 people.

«The move to Grupo Bimbo is a natural next step that can benefit the Sara Lee bakery team and brands in Spain and Portugal, as they would become part of an organization fully dedicated to the bakery category», said Jan Bennink, executive chairman of Sara Lee´s board. «Divesting the bakery businesses allows Sara Lee´s international portfolio to become simpler and more focused on coffee and tea, the categories around which we are building a leading pure-play international company».

Sara Lee´s remaining international bakery businesses headquartered in France and Australia remain the subject of a divestiture process and a strategic review, respectively. These two businesses generated aggregate revenue of approximately 318 million USD in fiscal year 2011, and sell products primarily in France, Sweden, Italy, Australia and New Zealand.

Source: Bakenet.eu

Companies Grupo Bimbo, Sara Lee

Bread manufacturer, Grupo Bimbo, is the latest food giant to sign a research deal with EnWave to test “certain food products” on its nutraREV vacuum-based food dehydration technology.

However, the terms of the research and development agreement between EnWave and Grupo Bimbo were not disclosed.

“This is potentially a major step forward in EnWave’s strategy for the world-wide introduction of nutraDried food products,” stated EnWave chairman and Co-CEO, Dr Tim Durance.

“We have had a tremendous degree of interest from global food producers in our high-speed, low-cost dehydration technology, and this agreement with Grupo Bimbo represents our first collaboration with a Latin American-based company,” he added.

Technology benefits

EnWave’s nutraREV technology is used for dehydrating food products through its patented vacuum process.

This involves rapid and low-temperature extraction of water from food ingredients which the company claims to be more efficient than the freeze-dried process, cutting production costs by more than three quarters.

“We have found nutraREV can deliver cost savings of around 80 per cent compared to traditional freeze drying methods,” Jennifer Thompson, vice president corporate development and investor relations.

Cost-savings come from reductions in energy usage and labour thanks to the faster processing times, Thompson added.

According to EnWave, the nutraREV combines microwave energy transfer with a vacuum pressure control to dehydrate and alter structures in addition to driving chemical reactions.

The company said its technology creates “unique product characteristics” for both food products and medical applications, such as fruit, vegetables, probiotics, enzymes, proteins, food cultures, vaccines and antibodies.

“Vacuum microwaving has been available for some time but we have solved the problem of arcing – caused by plasma discharge – which burns the product undergoing dehydration,” said Thompson.

Other advantages of the system are the retention if colour, shape and flavour of foodstuffs as well as, or better than, freeze-dried produce, the company claims.

EnWave also said the dehydration system offers more flexibility on retention of moisture content, which can create extra market opportunities for the food. This means the same fruits can also be processed for different lengths of time to appeal to separate markets, for example berries could be chewy for the snack segment, crunchy for breakfast cereals or powdered for nutraceuticals.

In addition to nutraREV, EnWave has two other technology platforms: powderREV for the dehydration of bulk food cultures, probiotics and fine biochemicals such as enzymes, and bioREV and freezeREV for live or active biomaterial dehydration.

Major research agreements

The deal with Grupo Bimbo follows two other major research and development research and development agreements announced this year between EnWave and other global food companies.

Based on the initial success of the first phase of tests in April 2009 with partner Danisco, a global probiotics supplier for yoghurt, the two companies entered a second phase of testing to evaluate the commercial viability of EnWave’s powderREV dehydration technology on a wider scale.

In March 2010, EnWave announced that the powderREV technology had been successfully used to dry kilogram quantities of probiotic cultures provided by Danisco.

In July this year Nestle also entered into a research and development agreement involving EnWave’s nutraREV food dehydration technology.

Last month, the company opened a larger pilot-scale production and demonstration plant in Delta which is designed for use by current partners to produce test market quantities of food products on the company’s radiant energy vacuum (REV) dehydration technologies.

The company said it will also use the facility to demonstrate its technologies to potential partners, multinational collaborators and investors.

Source: Bakery and Snacks

Companies EnWave, freeze-dry technology, Grupo Bimbo

Mexican bakery giant Grupo Bimbo acquired Sara Lee‘s North American fresh bakery business for $959 million.

Grupo Bimbo was established in Mexico in 1945 by Lorenzo Servitje, Jaime A. Sendra, Jose T. Mata and Jaime Jorba. Today it is one of the most important baking companies in brand and trademark positioning, sales, and production volume around the world.

The bakery sale, expected to close early next year, means Bimbo gets the rights to the iconic Sara Lee name for fresh baked goods in the U.S., although Sara Lee keeps it for its other products, such as frozen desserts and deli meats.

Grupo Bimbo also is the marketer of Thomas’ English Muffins and Entenmann’s cakes.

The sale of the bakery business “was likely difficult for the company to swallow — giving up its namesake brand to another company,” analyst group Stifel Nicolaus wrote in a note to investors. But “this divestiture will be a good one for Sara Lee in the long run.”

The ad agency for Sara Lee bakery brands is Omnicom Group’s TBWA/Chiat/Day, Los Angeles, which also handles Sara Lee brands such as Jimmy Dean, Ballpark and Hillshire Farm. Sara Lee’s measured media spending on its bread and bakery products was $4.1 million in the first six months of the year, which is less than 20% of what it spent on all brands, according to Kantar Media.

Grupo Bimbo uses independent O’Leary and Partners, located in Newport Beach, Calif., as its agency for bread brands.

Bimbo spent $8.8 million marketing its brands in the U.S. in the first half of the year, including $4.8 million on its Arnold brand.

“At this point the relationships with the agencies remain unchanged,” said Sara Lee spokeswoman Alissa Bolton. David Margulies, a spokesman for Grupo Bimbo’s U.S. division, Bimbo Bakeries USA, said that “until the acquisition is approved, there are not going to be any changes other than would happen in the normal course of business.”

For Bimbo, the acquisition will grow its U.S presence from 34 bakeries and more than 7,000 sales routes to 75 bakeries and 13,000 routes, the company said.

The company pledged to invest more than $1 billion in the next five years to create an “efficient manufacturing and service platform.”

Companies baking companies, Grupo Bimbo, Sara Lee

Latin American bakery giant Grupo Bimbo’s has acquired Mexican confectionery producer Dulces Vero, for an undisclosed sum.

Bimbo, which originated in Mexico and is now one of Latin America’s largest food companies, has shown determination to increasing its domestic market share. It made $1.1bn in Mexico in the first quarter of 2010 – a rise of 3.2% on last year, and half the company’s total net sales.

The company has completed a number of acquisitions in South America over the past three years including companies from Brazil, Argentina and Colombia – helping it to become one of the top five food companies globally.

Dulces Vero reported a turnover of $87m in 2009. It exports it lollipops and gummy sweets to over 20 countries worldwide and will folded into Grupo Bimbo’s its snack division, Barcel. Bimbo hopes the purchase will boost sales in the US Hispanic market.

Companies Dulces Vero, Grupo Bimbo

Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV is accepting submissions for its bi-annual Grupo Bimbo Pan-American Nutrition Award 2010. The award, which includes US$56,000 to be distributed among named winners, recognizes the best research papers of the year in the fields of human nutrition and food science and technology.

Grupo Bimbo said the award is presented to two winners — a professional and a young scientist — in each of the four zones the company serves: the United States, Mexico, Central America and South America.

To qualify as a professional, individuals must have carried out unique, valuable research projects alone or as part of a team with at least five peer-reviewed publications in the past three years and have supervised postgraduates. They also must have taught and participated in activities promoting science.

Young scientists must have concluded a master’s degree a maximum of two years before publication date of the invitation for the award and must actively participate in scientific and/or technical research projects. They also must have at least one publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

The professional award carries a cash prize of US$5,000 for each zone, while the young scientist award has a cash prize of US$2,000.

An independent scientific jury from each geographical zone, composed of researchers and experts in human nutrition, food science and technology, will rate the submitted projects on several criteria, including:

• The quality, content, and congruence of the proposal in relation to the disciplines set forth by this invitation,

• Scientific quality (i.e. adequate methodology, congruence between results, scientific questions studied and interpretation), originality and innovation in the studied area,

• The impact on and benefits to human nutrition of the corresponding region,

• The impact on and benefits to the industrialization processes of food products, according to the resources and needs of the corresponding region, and

• Relevance and satisfactory extent of the objectives set.

Award submissions should be registered by 15 Oct. at the award web site premiopanamericano.grupobimbo.com.

Companies Grupo Bimbo, Nutrition Award 2010, professional award

Net majority income of Grupo Bimbo SAB de CV in the year ended 31 Dec., 2009, was NP5,956 million (US$466 million), up 38% from NP4,320 million in fiscal 2008. Sales rose 42%, climbing to NP116,479 million (US$9,118 million) from NP82,317 million.

For the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, net majority income was NP1,760 million (US$138 million), up 38% from NP1,274 million in the same period a year ago. Sales were NP30,084 million (US$2,355 million), up 36% from NP22,178 million in the same period a year ago.

“It was an outstanding year for Grupo Bimbo, marked by the successful integration of the largest acquisition in its history that along with a more beneficial commodity environment, helped propel the company’s results,” Grupo Bimbo said.

Operating profit in the United States during fiscal 2009 was NP4,261 million (US$334 million), up sharply from NP125 million a year ago. Sales rose 177% to NP49,977 million (US$3,913 million) from NP18,049 million.

“Net sales more than doubled on a quarterly basis when compared to the same period of 2008,” Grupo Bimbo said. “Growth reflected the incorporation of BBU East and higher volumes in both regions. New products, such as Sandwich Thins, which were pioneered by BBU, as well as promotions, helped drive volume growth in a highly competitive environment. For the full year, sales almost tripled … also as a result of the incorporation of BBU East and healthy volume performance.”

In the Mexico division, operating profit was NP7,500 million (US$587 million), up 9% from NP6,855 million in fiscal 2008. Net sales were up narrowly to NP55,388 million (US$4,338 million) from NP54,845 million.

In Latin America, operating profit fell 30% to NP301 million (US$24 million) from NP431 million despite a 20% gain in sales to NP13,606 million. Grupo Bimbo said the declines reflected significant deterioration in its Venezuela operations. Also in the region, the company said it experienced higher sales and distribution expenses associated with efforts to increase penetration, as well as higher labor costs.

Companies Grupo Bimbo, sales