Serving the GoodLife
From Benelux frozen meat company to a North-West European frozen snack platform.
- Industry: Frozen Food
- Entry: 2014
The company
Goodlife Foods, formerly known as Izico, is one of the leading European frozen snacks companies. Egeria acquired Izico via a carve-out from Wessanen in 2014, at that time primarily selling traditional frozen meat snacks (primarily frikandellen and hamburgers) in the Benelux for c. €85 million. Today, Goodlife has sales of c. €200 million throughout Europe and serves as a category partner for customers with a portfolio of on-trend frozen snacks. Goodlife is also significantly less dependent on specific products, customers and geographies.
Which opportunities did we see?
Based on our experience with former portfolio company Ad van Geloven between 2004 and 2008, which is Goodlife’s main Benelux competitor, we were familiar with Izico and the frozen snack market. When we heard that Wessanen was considering the sale of its frozen snack division Izico, we were able to provide them with an offer based on our experience, which was sufficient for Wessanen to grant us the opportunity to perform due diligence before the auction started. During the process, we were able to confirm the following opportunities:
- favorable underlying trends that contribute to growth of the stable frozen snack market (c. 2-4% p.a.) driven by a shift to more premium snacks (ethnic snacks, ovenable products, meat-free alternatives);
- high volume production facilities with excess capacity;
- strong base of leading Benelux retail and foodservice customers with commercial opportunities to:
- expand into other geographical regions (with different customers);
- broaden the product portfolio with on-trend product development (vegetable, ethnic, healthier, meat mimic); and
- actively develop a full private label and branded portfolio to become a true category partner for the frozen snack category.
Buy and build
In the process of developing the above value creation strategy with management, we concluded that buy-and-build would be a tangible way to accelerate the transformation. During our holding period, we have as such done the following acquisitions:
- Daloon, DK/UK (2016): Producer of spring rolls and vegetarian snacks in the Nordics and the UK. Through the acquisition of Daloon, we increased the market position of Goodlife in spring rolls and developed vegetarian capabilities, while entering into new geographies with new target customers.
- Goodlife, UK (2017): Producer of frozen vegetable snacks such as falafel and vegetable burgers in the UK. The acquisition of Goodlife significantly strengthened our vegetable product range and geographic diversity. Next to that, we saw an opportunity to integrate the recently acquired Daloon and Goodlife factories in the UK.
- De Vries Van Oers, Benelux (2017): Producer of frozen crumb and meat snacks in the Benelux. The acquisition of DVVO strengthened our product portfolio with crumb (croquettes) and meat snacks (mainly Mexicano) and increased the share of customers in the foodservice and petrol channels.
- Exellent, Benelux (2018): Exellent is a producer of crumb snacks in The Netherlands. The acquisition of Exellent strengthened our position in crumb products in the Dutch retail and foodservice channels
- Flexitarian Bastards, Benelux (2020): Producer of meat-free alternatives of traditional Dutch meat snacks. With the acquisition of Flexitarian Bastards, we have acquired the absolute best in class knowledge, formulas and production techniques for meat-free alternatives, which we believe to be a major driver of growth for Goodlife in the years ahead.
In addition to organic growth by selling excess capacity and developing new products, buy-and-build has clearly helped Goodlife to transform from of a Benelux-oriented frozen meat company, to a NW European category partner with a full range of branded, private-label, vegetable-based, meat, meat-free and ethnic frozen snacks.