Rice doing business
rice markets, are to merge their UK operations.
Texan company Riviana Foods is to join forces with Spain's and Ebro Puleva group to step up its presence in the UK rice market.
Both companies already operate there - Riviana Foods though Stevens & Brotherton and Ebro Puleva via Joseph Heap & Sons - and have close ties elsewhere in Europe. The new UK unit, as yet unnamed, will be owned 51 per cent by Ebro Puleva and 49 per cent by Riviana.
S&B's business is centred on the marketing and distribution of branded and private label rice, dried fruit and other food products, while Heap focuses on rice milling and rice flour milling, as well as being a major supplier of rice flour and bulk rice to industrial customers in the UK. It also offers the Peacock rice brand to ethnic foodservice markets.
The combined company, which is expected to have annual sales of around €75 million, will base its commercial marketing and sales activities for rice - as well as dried fruit and other food products - at S&B's base in Orpington, south of London, while rice milling and rice flour production will remain at Heap's facilities in Liverpool.
"For Riviana, this transaction demonstrates one of our key growth strategies of partnering with others to broaden our markets and scope," said Joseph A. Hafner, Jr., president and CEO of the company.
"It also allows us to expand our relationship with Ebro Puleva and to take advantage of the relative strengths of each company in the UK market."
Riviana and Ebro Puelva have a long-standing partnership in Europe: the two companies jointly own Herto, the Ricegrowers' Co-operative Limited of Australia and Boost Nutrition - all based in Belgium - as well as Euryza in Germany. Herto is one of Europe's leading rice cake manufacturers, while Boost Nutrition's Bosto brand is the number one selling rice in Belgium, and Euryza is one of Germany's largest rice companies.
Ebro Puleva also recently added a number of rice brands owned by the US-based Kraft Foods which are now distributed in Germany, Austria and Denmark by Euryza and Boost Nutrition.
Ebro Puleva - which took over as Riviana's partner after its acquisition of the Herba rice group in 2001 - has extensive dairy and sugar operations as well as rice, and has been steadily disposing of most of its businesses which do not fit within these three core areas.
Riviana, on the other hand, focuses almost entirely on rice, selling a number of brands such as Mahatma, Carolina and Success as well as supplying many of the major retail groups with own label rice. In addition to the US and Europe, the company has food operations in Central America.
