Bega Cheese
| Public company | |
| Traded as | ASX: BGA |
| Industry | Dairy, Food processing |
| Founded | 1899 |
| Headquarters | Bega, New South Wales, Australia |
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| Website | Official website |
AU$1,195,967,000 (2016)Bega Cheese is an Australian dairy company based in the town of Bega, New South Wales. Founded as an agricultural cooperative owned by their dairy suppliers, it became a public company in 2011 when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange. Despite this, close to half of shares publicly traded are still held by Bega's farmer-suppliers. It is currently one of the largest dairy companies in Australia, with a valuation of around AU$775 million (as of January 2017)
Bega Cheese Ltd also has a 25% stake of Capitol Chilled Foods (Australia) Pty Ltd, with multinational company Lion having the controlling interest. Capitol Chilled Foods, which is the Australian Capital Territory's sole dairy manufacturer, owns the Canberra Milk and Canberra Gold brands.
Close to half of Bega Cheese's revenue (as of 2016) comes from their retail cheese and processed cheese products, with their flagship "Bega" brand (distributed by Fonterra under a long-term agreement) holding 15.7% of the Australian retail cheese market. Together with other retail brands such as "Tatura", "Royal Victoria", "Melbourne" and "Dairymont", these products are exported to 40 countries around the world and distributed across Australia where they are available in most supermarkets and general stores. .
Their other major business segments include bulk "core dairy ingredients" such as cheese, cream cheese and powdered milk (making up approximately 40% of their revenue) and "nutritional products" produced under the Bega Bionutrients brand (such as lactoferrin and milk protein concentrate), which make up around 20% of their revenue.
On the 19th of January, 2017, Bega Cheese Limited announced a AU$460 million deal with multinational food conglomerate Mondelez International to acquire most of their grocery and cheese businesses in Australia and New Zealand (except Philadelphia-branded cream cheese). The deal will include brands such as Vegemite, Bonox and the license to manufacture Kraft-branded cheese and peanut butter under 2017 as well as a manufacturing site in Port Melbourne, Victoria. The move will add around AU$310 million to annual revenue (a rise of around 25%) and give Bega a strong position in the Australian consumer goods market - including a one-third share of the AU$550 million spreads market - as well as transforming Bega Cheese from a company mainly reliant on the volatile, low-margin bulk food ingredients market to a diversified consumer-goods company. Shareholders responded by lifting Bega Cheese's shares around 13%, the strongest rise in more than a year.
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