Navis buys New Zealand egg producer Mainland Poultry

Mainland was founded in 1998 and is controlled by Michael Guthrie, Jeff Winmill and Murray Valentine, who put the business up for sale because a sizeable capital injection was required to upgrade equipment and support growth. The founding shareholders will retain a minority interest in the business and senior management will stay in their present positions.

Mainland has more than 1.2 million layer birds across seven farms. The egg division, known as Zeagold, operates under the Farmer Brown and Woodland brands, selling its products in New Zealand as well as Hong Kong and Singapore. The business is vertically integrated: it produces feed using its own grain, rears day-old chicks, grading and packaging eggs, and processing egg products.

In addition to producing feed for internal use, Mainland sells feed throughout New Zealand and the Pacific Islands under the Mainfeeds brand.

“We are excited to be partnering with the highly-experienced management team led by Michael Guthrie and Jeff Winmill, and look forward to supporting their ambitions for Mainland both in New Zealand and offshore. Our objective is to transform Mainland into the pre-eminent agribusiness in the Oceania region with strong export linkages into Asia," Philip Latham and Ravi Jeyaraj, both partners at Navis, said in a statement.

The GP has previous experience in poultry through Bangkok Ranch and Golden Foods Siam (GFS). Navis owned duck processor Bangkok Ranch for 13 years, completing bolt-on acquisitions of a European deep-frozen Peking duck producer and a genetics business. All assets apart from the genetics business were sold to the founders in 2013, generating a 1.9x return.

GFS was the unwanted subsidiary of a Europe-based parent when Navis bought the company in 2009. It doubled production capacity and built out the international sales channels, turning GFS into the third-largest cooked chicken producer in Thailand. It secured a 3.4x multiple on exiting the business to Brazil’s BRF in late 2015.

Other investments in New Zealand poultry include Tegel Group, which is the country’s largest chicken producer and second-largest sausage producer. Affinity Equity Partners bought the company from Pacific Equity Partners in 2010 and took it public last year, raising NZ$298 million. It has a current market capitalization of around NZ$415 million.

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Buyouts
• Consumer
• Industrials
• New Zealand
• Agriculture
• Navis Management