Australia's famous Drumstick and Choc Wedge ice-creams are about to take on a European flavour.
The 107-year-old Australian maker of the famous ice-creams, Peters, has fallen into European hands.
R&R, Europe's second largest ice-cream producer, has bought Peters for an undisclosed sum.
When news of the deal became public last week, market watchers speculated that the deal could be worth more than $450 million, based on Morgan Stanley's valuation of the company.
That would make a tidy profit for Peters' private equity owners Pacific Equity Partners (PEP), who are believed to have paid about $250 million for the company in 2012.
Peters, whose new owners are owned by UK-based R&R's French private equity backers PAI Partners, has annual sales of about $269 million.
It employs about 500 people across Australia.
Peters is the largest ice-cream supplier into Australia's supermarket sector.
"Manufacturing will continue at our world class facility in Mulgrave from which we intend to create new opportunities for growth," Peters chief executive Stephen Audsley said in a statement on Tuesday.
R&R chief executive Ibrahim Najafi described Peters as an iconic Australian business.
"It will be an exciting complement to R&R's European presence," he said.
"We look forward to working with Stephen and his team and accelerating our growth as one combined business."
PEP dropped plans last Thursday to publicly float Peters on the stock market with an initial public offering understood to have raised less than the proposed sale price.
R&R has nine production sites across Europe, where it makes ice-cream under the Nestlé and Disney brands among others.
AAP gr/bt
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