Sweet Products, the parent company of ice cream producer IJsboerke and chocolate brand Jacques, is hopeful to take over Cémoi, France’s largest chocolate manufacturer. The takeover would triple the group’s turnover.
Family seeks external partner
The Belgian company is conducting exclusive takeover talks with Cémoi, which should result in a takeover deal to be completed within a few months. Strikingly, Sweet Products is just half the size of its intended acquisition target Cémoi.
Together, the two companies would account for a turnover of more than a billion euros: Sweet Products achieved a turnover of 474 million euros last year, Cémoi reached 750 million euros. Due to the coronavirus crisis, those numbers were lower than before. “We are convinced that, after the coronavirus crisis, the chocolate market will continue to grow as before”, a Sweet Products spokesperson told Belgian newspaper De Tijd.
Through the takeover, the company wants to enable further growth, first and foremost for Cémoi itself. The French company started looking for an investor in the autumn of 2020 because, in its own words, the company was getting too big to continue as a family business. To keep playing on an international level – the chocolate maker is active all the way up to the United States – an increase in scale is imperative, and the company itself must take the road towards an acquisition. That is only possible with an external partner, is the reasoning.
Remaining candidate
Cémoi has conducted talks with a lot of competitors, but now Sweet Products is the only one left. “We share the same family values, and that forms a strong basis for talking exclusively to each other now”, CEO Jean-Marie van Logtestijn says. Sweet Products is wholly owned by Fons Walder, who also owns chocolate brands Duc d’O and Baronie. However, the producer is most active in private label chocolate for supermarkets: Sweet Products supplies “all European supermarkets”, including Aldi, Auchan and Tesco.
The vertical integration of the French company is particularly interesting for Sweet Products: thanks to a factory in Ivory Coast, Cémoi controls its entire production process. Van Logtestijn hopes that, following the takeover, it will also be possible to purchase cocoa beans via that African branch and thus hopes to no longer be dependent on the futures market.
