Private equity-owned Accolade Wines has reportedly paid upwards of $50 million for family-owned Grant Burge Wines.
Accolade Wines said in a statement Grant Burge, who founded the Grant Burge Wines business with his wife Helen in 1988, will act as a brand ambassador under the deal, which includes the Grant Burge brand, Burge and Rathbone Fine Wine Merchants business and the Krondorf Winery at Tanunda in the Barossa Valley.
“We have a really strong business domestically, but we know Accolade Wines wants to also grow the business internationally, and they have the platform to do that,” Burge said in the statement.
Accolade, which counts the Leasingham, Houghton and Hardys wine brands in its portfolio, had been for a base in the Barossa, after selling a 50% stake in Barossa Valley Estate four years ago, and approached Grant Burge Wines.
“Grant Burge Wines has five generations of Barossa pedigree and has consistently delivered wines of the highest calibre in a number of different categories, including sparkling, premium white and red wines and fortified wines,” said Accolade Asia Pacific general manager Michael East.
“As we have done with the other brands, we see this as an opportunity to grow the brand even further globally through our distribution network across 112 countries.”
According to the Advertiser, the deal is worth more than $50 million.
Cadbury customers will soon notice a difference in the size of their blocks of chocolate, with Cadbury revealing today it plans to reduce the size of family-size blocks of chocolate by 10% to cut costs.
Fairfax reports the decision to shrink the size of the popular treat was made in the face of rising packaging and raw material costs.
“We’ve just had unprecedented cost headwinds over the past 18 months,” said Amanda Banfield, managing director for Australasia for Cadbury owner Mondelez International.
But Banfield told Fairfax the company knows some shoppers won’t be happy.
“We have to kind of be real about that,” Banfield says.
“Clearly any chocolate lover is going to be a bit disappointed.”
Cadbury previously reduced the size of the family blocks from 250 grams to 200 grams in 2009, but increased the blocks to their current size of 220 grams in 2013.
Aussie shares have traded higher again this morning, off the back of strong gains on Wall Street overnight.
Tristan K’Nell, head of trading at Quay Equities, said local investors are expecting the Reserve Bank to cut official interest rates this afternoon.
“The Australian share market is looking at a ninth consecutive day of gains, as the most anticipated interest rates decision in recent years continues to boost local stocks,” K’Nell said.
“A late surge on Wall Street and back-to-back solid gains in crude oil are also combing to push stocks higher.”
The S&P/ASX200 benchmark was up 25.1 points to 5650.4 points at 11.41am AEDT. On Monday, the Dow Jones closed 196.09 points higher, up 1.14% to 17361 points
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Eloise is an experienced business journalist and editor, who has held senior editorial roles at SmartCompany since 2014. Prior to joining SmartCompany, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry. Eloise has degrees in media and communications, marketing and business management, and political science. You can follow her on LinkedIn, and Twitter at @ellykeating.
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