Hong Kong’s SAIF Partners picks up juice company from Danone for €200m

Danone will sell its holding for HK$6 (77 US cents) per share and is part of a drive from the French food group to concentrate its efforts in China on natural mineral and spring water beverages.

In May last year, local media reports suggested that Blackstone and Carlyle were among a number of private equity firms looking into acquiring a minority stake in Huiyuan.

Earlier that year, a $2.5bn buy-out bid from Coca-Cola was blocked by the Ministry of Commerce under newly introduced anti-monopoly laws that were widely seen as an attempt to keep Chinese companies under local control.

Danone’s stake in the juice-maker, based on Coca-Cola’s bid last year, was worth around €450m, but is now going for less than half of that figure.

Huiyuan was established in 1992 and is the largest privately owned juice producer in China. Based in Beijing, it manufactures and sells fruit juice and vegetable juice, nectars, bottled water, tea, and dairy drinks. In 2007, the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007.

New owner SAIF Partners has reportedly been raising a new $1bn fund and plans to raise the largest ever yuan-denominated fund towards the end of this year.

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