News

DuPont has divested its Natural Colors business, which is part of the DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences (N&B) segment, to DDW, The Color House. DDW is a global privately held company specializing in natural color solutions for the food and beverage industry.

DuPont has a defined strategy of active portfolio management to further align the company’s portfolio with high return opportunities, consistent with its disciplined approach to capital allocation. This includes always evaluating the business and asset mix, and, as appropriate, pursuing strategic alternatives to optimize value creation.

“The Natural Colors business offers quality natural colours to a global customer base and is an attractive business with two world-class production sites”, said Matthias Heinzel, President, DuPont Nutrition & Biosciences Business. “However, it is not part of N&B’s strategic focus areas. Following a strategic review of the Natural Colors business, we concluded that it would likely deliver greater value as part of a dedicated and leading colours player. We are convinced that the Natural Colors business will thrive under DDW’s ownership.”

Bosch plans to sell its packaging machinery business, based in Waiblingen/Germany, to a newly incorporated entity managed by CVC Capital Partners (CVC). The company and its Pharma and Food units will remain intact. Based in Luxemburg, CVC is a leading private equity and investment advisory firm with 24 offices in Europe, Asia, and the United States. It currently manages more than USD 75 bn of assets.

The parties signed an agreement on 11 July 2019 effecting the transfer of the entire packaging technology business and its 6,100 associates in 15 countries. Completion of the sale is expected to close at the turn of the year.

Dr Alexander Dibelius, Managing Partner of CVC, said: “Bosch Packaging Technology is a strong company in an attractive market with long-term growth prospects. Packaging Technology has an excellent reputation for quality and innovation, a broad product range, a global footprint, and experienced associates. Together with the management team, we will work to take the business forward in the years ahead, and to make it even more competitive.”

Dr Stefan König, President of Robert Bosch Packaging Technology GmbH, said: “We regard this new partnership with CVC as a huge opportunity for our future success. Just under two years ago, we completely modified our strategy. It now includes working on a completely new range of smart and sustainable process and packaging technologies. This will allow us to offer our customers even more attractive product solutions and services in the future. Our customers and our associates will benefit from the progress we have made.”

In the first nine months of fiscal year 2018/19 (ended May 31, 2019), the Barry Callebaut Group, Zürich, grew its overall sales volume by 5% (+ 10.6% in Q3) to 1,589,181 tonnes.  

Sales volume in the chocolate business grew by 5.9%, well above the underlying global chocolate confectionery market, which was up 0.9% according to Nielsen. Global Cocoa volumes increased +2.2%. Sales revenue in the period under review amounted to CHF 5.5 billion, an increase of +8.2% in local currencies (+5.7% in CHF). The increase in sales revenue was impacted by higher raw material prices and the first-time adoption of IFRS 153. 

"As anticipated we accelerated our volume growth in the third quarter. All Regions contributed to the good sales momentum, and our volume growth was again significantly above the global chocolate confectionery market," explained Antoine de Saint-Affrique, CEO of the Barry Callebaut Group. "We are confident we will deliver on our current mid-term guidance. Going forward, we remain committed to achieving consistent above-market volume growth and enhanced profitability. This is why, in January, we renewed our mid-term guidance for the coming three fiscal years."

In March 2019, Barry Callebaut inaugurated a state-of-the-art processing unit at its Société Africaine de Cacao (SACO) plant in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. It includes a fourth grinding line and will increase SACO’s cocoa bean processing capacity by over 40.0% by 2022. This major extension highlights Barry Callebaut’s commitment to the African continent, not only as a supplier of high quality cocoa beans but also as an industrial base and as an emerging market for cocoa and chocolate consumption. Furthermore Barry Callebaut signed in April 2019 a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government of Serbia to construct the Group’s first chocolate factory in Southeastern Europe. The plant in Novi Sad is expected to have an initial annual production capacity of over 50,000 tonnes and to be operational by 2021.

Cargill Inc. is transforming its production site in Krefeld, Germany, from a corn to a wheat processing plant, representing an investment of USD 200 m. Construction will begin in early 2020 with completion expected by the summer of 2021. The first deliveries of high-quality wheat products will start in the autumn of 2021.

This will allow Cargill to address the market changes in the area of nutrition and packaging and to even better serve its customers’ needs. The increasing demand for protein rich foods driven, by the growing world population and the rising need for industrial starches in the packaging industry are driving the need for vegetable proteins and specialized starches. Today the Krefeld plant produces a range of corn starches and sweeteners for the food and industrial markets. By transforming the site from corn to wheat Cargill can add wheat proteins and specialized starches to its portfolio.

The new unit, that will be built on the current factory site, will use the best available production technologies to meet the highest standards of reliability and sustainability. “Cargill remains committed to serving its global customers in a safe and sustainable way,” says Alain Dufait, managing director Cargill Starches, Sweeteners & Texturizers Europe. “This transformation will not only allow us to expand our portfolio serving the evolving needs of our customers, but also use more sustainable production methods.”

Gelita AG, global market leader in the production of gelatine and collagen peptides, has expanded its gelling agent portfolio by presenting a world-first: agar-agar sheets. Historically, plant-based agar-agar has only been available in powder form often as a mixture with other gelling agents.

Now, using a new manufacturing process, Gelita has succeeded in producing pure agar-agar as a standardized sheet. This format offers numerous advantages in culinary applications. Agar-agar sheets eliminate the ambiguity of spoon measurements and complicated conversions of different powder solutions. Every single sheet has an exactly defined and identical gelling strength, greatly simplifying its use in recipes, ensuring a successful dish every time.

The demand for sustainable packaging among consumers and brand owners all over the world is growing at an exponential rate, which in many cases drives the demand to replace plastic packaging. Strong partnerships are required to bring about the development and innovation needed to meet this demand – a good reason for Bosch Packaging Technology and BillerudKorsnäs to intensify their successful collaboration.

In 2016, Bosch and BillerudKorsnäs presented their first major joint innovation: Sealed Paper Packaging on a vertical form, fill and seal machine (VFFS). The ZAP module from Bosch makes it possible to process mono-material Axello ZAP paper from BillerudKorsnäs on VFFS technology with dust-tight sealing. Now, Bosch Packaging Technology and BillerudKorsnäs are developing new sustainable paper-based packaging innovations. Both companies are further strengthening their approach to work closely with partners along the value chain to find better solutions for a sustainable future.

The first concrete result of this enhanced collaboration is the development of a new packaging concept called Pearl. It aims to show how uniquely formed and right-sized small packages, called shaped paper pods, can contribute to a more sustainable future by utilizing the unique formability of the FibreForm material (3D-formable paper patented by BillerudKorsnäs). The material is processed on machinery from Bosch Packaging Technology, who not only contributes long-standing expertise in forming, filling and sealing of a wide variety of materials to the cooperation but also ensures the subsequent industrialization of the newly developed technologies for commercial production. The Pearl concept will be shown at FachPack (24 to 26 September 2019 in Nuremberg/Germany), PackExpo (23 to 25 September 2019 in Las Vegas/USA) and Interpack (7 to 13 May 2020 in Dusseldorf/Germany).

The Barry Callebaut Group, Zürich, further anchors Barry Callebaut’s activities in Belgium by building a new Global Distribution Center (GDC) in Lokeren, Belgium.  

The new GDC, comprising of a low bay and a fully automated high bay warehouse (together more than 60,000 m²), will serve as a logistics hub for the global distribution of chocolate produced by Barry Callebaut. This includes the vast majority of products in the Gourmet & Specialties and Decorations segment, as well as solid chocolate for Food Manufacturers customers.

The new GDC allows Barry Callebaut to consolidate its activities currently located across several locations in the region of Aalst, Belgium. This will optimize and increase the efficiency of Barry Callebaut’s product distribution. The warehouse site will be realized by Warehouses De Pauw (WDP). Barry Callebaut will rent the GDC based on a long term rental contract. The handover of this new site is expected for the third quarter of 2021. In addition to the 85 people currently employed, Barry Callebaut expects to have additional vacancies based on the projected growth for the GDC activities.

The new site supports Barry Callebaut’s goal to become carbon positive by 2025, as described in the Group’s sustainability plan, Forever Chocolate. The logistics hub will be fully energy-neutral, certified by BREAAM1, by investing in, amongst others, solar panels, use of materials with low life cycle cost, geothermal energy, charging stations for electric vehicles, and extensive facilities for cyclists.