Plans to expand market share in North America, Europe.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: US-based organic food company Hain Celestial Group Inc. has purchased the Basmati rice manufacturer Tilda Ltd. for $357 million (217 million British pounds).
The payment was made in the form of 107 million British pounds in cash, 90 million in stock options, and a loan note of 20 million made payable exactly one year after the deal goes through.
As a company, Tilda accrued roughly $190 million in sales during the last fiscal year, and is expected to boost Hain Celestial’s adjusted second-half earnings for 2014 as much as six to ten cents for each diluted share. As it is, Hain Celestial’s shares rose on January 14 by over 4%, hitting $95.25 per share with a volume of 321,780 shares.
As for Tilda, it was founded in 1972 and sells over 60 rice and rice-related products in more than 40 countries across India, North America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Hain Celestial, which is based in Lake Success, New York, plans to expand the Tilda brand’s market share specifically in the US, Canada, and Europe by acquiring the company.
Tilda is perhaps best remembered for when it arrived in the US, promising to be the cheapest Basmati rice available on the market. Over the decades, as the NRI population has increased substantially in the US, Canada, and the UK, it has seen a huge rise in the amount of competition it has received from brands such as Lakshmi.
Tilda co-founder Shilen Thakrar, in a statement, said “We believed Tilda needed to align with a company with the full resources, size and scale of Hain Celestial and its global platform of products in order to realize the full worldwide potential of our rice brands. We are delighted to entrust our family’s business into the capable hands of Irwin Simon and his team at Hain Celestial.”
Hain Celestial echoed those sentiments, its CEO Irwin D. Simon saying “We are very excited by the strategic acquisition of Tilda, which expands our worldwide better-for-you product portfolio into the premium Basmati rice category along with other specialty rice products.”