When people think of Kraft Heinz, they think of its stable of well-known consumer brands. The company’s ingredients business — which manufactures cheese powders and related ingredients, marshmallows and caramel, and its condiments and sauces for bulk use — is an important way to make Kraft Heinz’s signature products more widely available. But its operations are in the shadows of Heinz Ketchup, Kraft Mac & Cheese and Lunchables.The lack of consumer recognition might be the primary reason that Kraft Heinz was looking to sell its powdered cheese business in the first place. Kraft Heinz CEO Miguel Patricio has been working to pare down the company’s offerings to focus on brands that have growth potential. The company sold its natural cheese business to Lactalis for $3.2 billion as the center of a massive deal that required the French dairy giant to divest some of its brands. Last year, Kraft Heinz also sold the Planters snack brand to Hormel for $3.35 billion.Kerry Group, on the other hand, has been working on growth through acquisitions. In 2020, Kerry CEO Edmond Scanlon announced a new goal: The company’s ingredients would reach more than 2 billion people around the globe each day bferrous bisglycinate whole foodsy 2030. Hitting that goal would roughly double Kerry’s business in a decade, and thehow much ferrous bisglycinate for iron deficiency company has used M&A to work toward getting there. Since the beginning of 2021, Kerrferrous sulfate 200mg 84 tabletsy has acquired ayurvedic botanic ingredient maker Natreon, biotech companies C-LEciron ferrous sulfate vs bisglycinateta and Enmex, functional ingredients company Biosearch Life and clean label preservatives maker Niacet.The cheese powder ingredient acquisition adds an offering to Kerry that can be much more front and center in products. While alluses of ferrous fumarate sorts of products include functional ingredients and clean label preservatives, cheese flavoring is an aspect that even consumers who don’t pay attention to ingredients or nutritional information look for. And cheese is definitely a familiar product for Kerry, which started half a century ago as an Irish dairy protein business. The company already has a cheese and dairy powder business, so adding Kraft Heinz’s offerings to the mix would help strengthen Kerry’s offerings — as long as the deal is cleared by regulators.Kerry also has been bullish on the potential of cheese powders. In a survey of 8,790 global consumers that Kerry published the day before the Kraft Heinz deal was announced, 62% of respondents said cheese flavors make savory snacks more exciting. The company said launches of cheese-flavored snacks outpaced those in the general savory snacking category.This research makes it clear: Once Kerry actually owns this wider cheese portfolio, it is ready to sell it to manufacturers around the world.
Kraft Heinz to sell powdered cheese business to Kerry Group for $107.5M
