Nestlé creates joint venture with PAI Partners for frozen pizzas in Europe

The Swiss food giant Nestlé announced Friday the creation of a joint venture with the investment fund PAI Partners in frozen pizzas in Europe, without revealing the amount of the transaction. These activities generate an annual turnover of around 400 million Swiss francs (408 million euros), Nestlé said in a press release, however, estimating that the transaction should be finalized during the second half of 2023.

The transaction will be subject to prior consultation with employees and must be approved by the regulatory authorities. The company's headquarters will be located in Germany and will operate two production sites, one in Germany in Nonnweiler, and the second in Italy in Benevento. The pizzas, marketed under the Wagner, Buitoni and Garden Gourmet brands, are currently sold in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands, details the communicated.

“We carried out a strategic review of our pizza activities in Europe and concluded that a partnership with PAI would be the best platform to develop their full potential,” said Marco Settembri, who leads Nestlé's activities in Europe, quoted in the communicated. The food giant, owner of Nespresso coffee pods, Maggi broths and KitKat chocolate bars, had already created a joint venture with PAI Partners in 2016 in ice cream under the name Froneri.

Nestlé will retain a minority stake in this joint venture in frozen pizzas "with voting rights equivalent to those of PAI Partners", specifies the press release, without giving quantified details. This decision to create a joint venture with PAI Partners comes as the French branch of the group announced on Monday that it had undertaken to compensate dozens of victims of the Buitoni pizza scandal contaminated by the E.coli bacterium, as part of an "amicable compensation" agreement.