PepsiCo acquires Brazil's cookie and cracker producer, Mabel

PepsiCo, the US-based beverage and snack company has acquired Mabel, one of Brazil's biggest cookie and cracker producers by paying between 800 and 900 million reais ($460 and $517 million).

Brazilian newspaper, O Estado de S. Paulo yesterday reported, citing unnamed sources close to the deal that PepsiCo outbid global rivals Bunge Inc and Mexico's Grupo Bimbo for Mabel, which had sales of 6.6 billion reais last year.

Based in the industrial city of Aparecida de Goiânia, Mabel has five factories across Brazil, produces 1.5 million packages of 150 different types of snack foods a day and exports its cookie and cracker to 35 countries.

Mabel, owned by the family of Brazilian Congressman Sandro Mabel, competes against Swiss giant Nestlé, which is dominant in the Brazilian cookie and cracker market.

New York-based PepsiCo has recently been trying to achieve growth in emerging markets as Brazil, India, Russia and China accounted for 26 per cent of its first-quarter profit and posted double-digit gains in sales of snacks and beverages in China and India.

Late last year it acquired Russia's OAO Wimm-Bill-Dann in a deal that valued the dairy-products and fruit-juice maker at $5.4 billion, and said in May 2010 that it will invest an additional $2.5 billion in China over the next three years as it tries to catch up with its arch rival Coca Cola in the $23-billion Chinese soft drinks market.