Fruit juices Capri-Sun seek new partner

Capri-Sun owner Hans-Peter Wild is looking for a buyer who wants a minority stake in the company. The Swiss billionaire is in his eighties and preparing his succession.

Time for a fresh start?

The 83-year-old businessman, one of the world’s thousand richest citizens according to Forbes, wants to sell a minority stake in his company, hoping to raise half a billion euros with it. However, he does not intend to use that sum for his retirement: rather, he wants to buy back Capri-Sun’s operations and licence in North America from Kraft Heinz.

Wild, son of the company’s founder, made Capri-Sun a global success – thanks in part to television ads featuring boxing icon Muhammad Ali. In 2014, Capri-Sun’s sister companies were sold to multinational Archer-Daniels-Midland for 2.3 billion euros, but Wild kept the soft drink and Pouch Partners (which makes the famous pouches for Capri-Sun) to himself. In 2023, a Canadian group took over Pouch Partners anyway, and now it is Capri-Sun’s turn to spread its wings.

However, Capri-Sun is no longer as fresh and fruity as it once was. Volume sold have been stagnant for years at six billion pouches. The company restructured in 2020, but only this year did Capri-Sun Zero enter the market – still only in a limited number of countries. Capri-Sun says it has around 1.3 billion euros in revenue with 24 production sites. Will a new shareholder be able to bring a fresh wind?