Mid Europa in €600m food deal

Mid Europa Partners, a Central Europe and Turkey-focused firm, has agreed to buy a controlling stake in Danube Foods Group.

Financial details of the transaction were undisclosed, but a source familiar with the matter told PEI that the company had an enterprise value of approximately €600 million. Mid Europa declined to comment.

Danube Foods Group, based in former Yugoslavia, includes Imlek and Mlekara Subotica, which on a combined basis represent the largest independent dairy business in the region; Bambi, a Serbian confectionery producer; and Knjaz Miloš, a Serbian producer of mineral water and other non-alcoholic beverages. The group had more than €400 million of revenues in 2014.

The transaction is the first by Mid Europa’s Fund IV, which closed on its revised target of €800m in August 2014. The fund came to market in February 2013 with a target of €1 billion, but Mid Europa agreed with LPs to raise no more than €850 million amid concerns that the fund would be too large to do deals in the region, which have dropped in size in recent years, PEI reported last year.

Fund IV will aim to deploy equity investments of between €75 million to €250 million in control buyouts of companies with enterprise values of up to €500 million.

Mid Europa Partners is an independent private equity firm focused on Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey. Operating from London, Budapest, Warsaw and Istanbul, it advises and manages funds of approximately €4.2 billion in aggregate.