SPC, Original Juice Company and Nature One Dairy to merge shoring up iconic Australian food brands' future

The Merger 

Iconic fruit and vegetable manufacturer SPC started over 100 years ago  and acquired from CocaCola-Amatll by a consortium led by Hussein Rifai’s Perpetuity Capital in 2019 - for $45m,  has agreed to merge with the Original Juice Company(OJC) and the powdered milk business, Nature One Dairy. 

SPC shareholders will have 69 per cent of the new company, Original Juice Co shareholders 15.5 per cent, and Nature One Dairy shareholders will have 15.3 per cent.

OJC is currently listed at $50m (one times revenue ) implying a merged value at circa $333m. 

The Projection and the opportunity 

The combined businesses are expected to deliver more than $400 million in revenue in the next financial year - and with economies of scale is expected to make a profit of $29m in 2025 and grow from strength to strength says Rifai.

“We want to become the Nestle of Australia. We want to become a global player in the food industry out of Australia,”

It’s interesting to note that CCA acquired SPC for $759m in 2005 and 15 years later to the Shepparton Partners Collective led by Perpetuity for $45m 

Bringing these companies together in a business with a turnover of $400m can give economies of scale making significant profits ..

The Players  

The major SPC shareholder is boutique investment house Perma Funds Management. Other shareholders include the meat industry superannuation fund Australian Food Super, and the billionaire Shahin family which sold the On the Run petrol station business to ASX-listed Viva Energy for $1.2 billion in 2023.

OJC an asx listed company is chaired by Jeff  Kennet (who will retire when the deal is done)  and led  CEO Steven Cail who is expected to  stay with the business 

Nature One Dairy CEO Nick Dimopoulos, will continue with the combined business for the transition period

Former Asahi Beverages Group CEO and SPC director Robert Iervasi will be appointed managing director of the merged business, and chaired by Hussein 

NAME	NEW ROLE	CURRENT ROLE
Hussein Rifai	Non-executive chairman	Executive chairman SPC
Andrew Cohen	Non-executive director	Executive director SPC
Kerry Smith	Non-executive director	Non-executive director OJC
Adam Brooks	Non-executive director	Non-executive director OJC
Robert Iervasi	Managing director Non-executive director	Non-executive director SPC
David Mallinson	Interim CFO	SPC CFO
Nick Dimopoulos	Head of NOD and Asian market	Nature One Dairy CEO

The Products 

The main brands in the SPC business are SPC, Ardmona, Goulburn Valley, and ProVital. 

The Original Juice Co lbrand is the third-largest orange juice producer in the country.

Nature oNe Dairy is a Singapore registered company that produces  manufactures and sells infant formula, nutritional formula and milk powder products

The Vote 

The vote by shareholders to approve the merger will be held in November.

Sources

Kuisine Group and 100 per cent of Melbourne beverages group Helping Humans, which makes juices and kombuchas. https://www.afr.com/street-talk/spc-calls-in-grant-samuel-to-scout-deals-20220329-p5a8xp

https://www.afr.com/companies/retail/spc-bulks-up-in-400m-merger-with-original-juice-company-20241002-p5kf8b?cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=0&cx_experienceId=EX4V7UQXCDIJ&cx_experienceActionId=showRecommendations08X6RHBOBRXICJQ#cxrecs_s

https://www.just-food.com/news/australias-original-juice-company-spc-nature-one-dairy-merger/

Investing in the startup space and in innovation is not for the feint hearted

Being an entrepreneur in a startup is not for the fint hearted …

And backing a startup is even riskier !!!

Michael Ho has an excellent pictorial 

However there is nothing better than making a positive change and playing at the cutting edge of innovation!!

What do you think ?

Pitching a deck takes time and persistence until you hit pay dirt

It takes persistance and many tries of things that don’t work - until you find something that does work!

Kismet raises $32.5m - seed after raising 12.5m last year and 4.5m the year before!!! 💥

The money 

Kismet, a Melbourne healthcare start-up raised AUD 32.5m in its seed financing round, with Singapore's MassMutual Ventures becoming its new investor. 

This is a year after Kismet CEO Mark Woodland shared with Smart Company that the startup was humbled and grateful for the $12.5 million capital from a funding round, which was led by global consumer internet group Prosus Ventures and venture capital firm Airtree Ventures. 

Early-stage investors include Flying Fox, Black Nova, and Airtree Ventures, invested AUD 4m in a pre-seed funding round in the year before 

The Growth 

The company, whose annual recurring revenue is expected to reach AUD 20m this year.

 

The Pain Kismet is trying to solve and the painkiller 

The Pain 

Healthcare's fractured system complicates managing health plans and services, increasing costs and limiting access.

The Painkiller 

Kismet improves the way people access healthcare and disability services.

They  connect the physical and digital worlds to enabling  greater access to disability and healthcare services at the tap of a button.

Safetyculture hits a home run with Airtree

Luke Anwar - CEO of Safety Culture celebrates his  investors - who have hit a home run as they have just completed a funding round led by Airtree of $165m at a $2.5b valuation.

“It’s nice to have early investors who backed us when we were getting started who are continuing to invest in our future. Thank you Morpheous, we are 1% of the way there.”

Application of Capital Raised 

• industry-leading innovation for larger enterprise customers, 
• accelerate AI adoption and 
• reward long-term employees

The Safetyculture Growth Path 

SafetyCulture has doubled in size in the last 2 years - having  85,000 businesses and close to 2 million users around the world using its platform!! 

It has  added 100 new roles in the last 6 months, and counts more than 800 employees across its six offices. 

Use of AI

Safetyculture  introduced AI-enhanced features in 2023, like mobile-first training course creation and instant inspection template generation from prompts, images and files. There’s a lot more to come says Luke 

The bHaG

So, Luke, what is the big hairy audacious goal ? 

He  says they are  on track towards its goal of 100 million users by 2032.

“We’ve built the world's largest repository of workplace data, containing over 5 petabytes of data and billions of images," Anear said. "AI is the way we can make sense of that information, and if we can harness it properly, we’ll effectively be able to give frontline teams superpowers that will completely change the way they work."

Kell Reilly of Airtree says that SafetyCulture has all the hallmarks of Silicon Valley’s tech heavyweights–a compelling vision, product, scale and team. 

“We’re excited to partner with another Aussie success story that’s making waves on the global stage." Says Kell! 

The power of VC supporting their Portfolio companies!!

Chinese VCs are running around like headless chooks

Venture Capital gave  rise to China’s tech industry, backing Alibaba, Baidu (internet search), Xiaomi (smartphones) and Didi (ride hailing). When these companies did public stock offerings, the venture capital investors reaped bountiful returns.

However 

The heightened tensions between China and the United States , and China’s leader, Xi Jinping aiming for national self-reliance - is making it tough for Chinese   VCs,  who have spent two decades cultivating start-ups and shaping tech development having nowhere to apply their expertise.

There may opportunities in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. But the only market that can compare to China in size and potential is the United States. 

VCs in China are runnning around like headless chooks 

The China government are  jailing VCs  or imposing  huge fines on private enterprises . it’s not easy to leave China completely and start over in a foreign country with a foreign language and a foreign culture and they are reluctant to leave China .

Ps - be sure to create  your business card , send  your vCard and refer your network with 

www.referron.com

 

Source 

New York times 

Australian Companies Investing in Education in India

BSI Learning facilitating Transnational education between India and Australia 

Australian Private equity firm LeapFrog Investments has led a  A$35m funding round in Mumbai-based Auxilo Finserve that gives education loans to students aspiring to study in India and abroad.

Leapfrog invested  $30 million with the balance  coming in from Auxilo's existing investors Trifecta Leaders Fund-I and Xponentia Opportunities Fund-II. 

Stewart Langdon, partner at LeapFrog Investments said that

"This is our first investment in education. It's a business that blends our core theme of financial inclusion not only by giving out loans but also helps people get access to education, which is tremendously important,", told Mint.

“We like businesses that are growing very fast and making an impact. Auxilo is enabling some 10,000 people to go overseas this year and achieve their dreams - so it is high growth and high impact. For all those reasons, we are excited about Auxilo"

Investment Growth

He also emphasized LeapFrog’s broader investment strategy in India: 

"There are two dimensions to what we are looking to do in India - we have a new  A$100m fund which is looking at financial inclusion,  healthcare and climate action! 

Since  2018, it has provided education loans to over 12,000 students, across more than 1,100 universities and education institutes in more than 30 countries. 

The company has also provided finance to over 170 educational institutes for their infrastructure expansion and working capital requirements. 

In the next 5 years, the company aims to disburse  $5m  ₹25,000 crore to more than 150,000 students for higher education, skilling, and executive courses, both in India and abroad.

The Mumbai-based education lender said its loans grew at a 75% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from FY21 to FY24, reaching  ₹2,878 crore as of 31 March, 2024. Growth in its disbursements is being driven by the rising demand for higher education, particularly from students in smaller cities, who aspire to study abroad, especially in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, fields.

India's diaspora sends back $111 billion in annual remittances—the largest globally—and plays a crucial role in the domestic economy.

There  could be a brilliant synergistic alliance between BSI Learning - who are upskilling Indian students in accredited Australian Diplomas and Auxilo - I am looking forward to connect them ! 

From Founder of Leapfrog Andrew Kuper 

Source Article from mint 

Spark Festival - Venture Capital Night Panel

Preeti Mohan - Niceto

Kylie Frazer - Flying Fox  

Jonathan Chow - Carthona Capital

Mike Abbott - Antler

Raaj Rayat - Airtree 

Mitchell Bissinger - Folklore 

Kylie:- Likes Quality thinking - founder should set the agenda

Mitch :- a standout was when I was asked why founder 

should accept his money! 

Founder sharing their failures, learnings and pivots 

Mike- Antler :- we use our ecosystem of venture partners  who have 

the experience  in the relevant field 

We often rely on founders deep knowledge and we do the

 business support 

Raaj - Airtree - feels comfortable being the dumbest guy in the 

room (David Shein :)) 

Revenue Operation

Vertical SaaS

Not AI

Digital Health

Vertical Software

Founder or product

Founder definitely founder definitely definitely founder

Ari Klinger and Garry Visontay hits a home run with Edtech - Kami

Back on 2018 - Ari Klinger and Garry Visontay  backed Kami for $1.5m 

BV Partners just invested valuing the business at $175m 

💥 boom 💥 

Big news today at Kami! Congratulations on the strategic investment from BV Partners valuing Kami at over $175m USD. 

Well done Hengjie Wang Alliv Samson Jordan Thoms Bob Drummond and team.

For more about the deal  click here 

Spark Festival 2024 Launches

Great day out at the start of NSW Spark Festival hosting 70 events over 5 days . 

Murray Hurps sharing the importance of connecting universities, research , government and commerce - and Anoulack Chanthivong - Minister of Innovation - supporting Spark Festival 

Great to catch up with The Hon. Jacqui Munro MLC ,  Anne-Marie Elias , Elizabeth Henderson Sara Khafaga 

Anneliese Appleton Sean Marshall Eraga Magotti Laura Earl Thomas Hilburn Dr. Sangeeta Aditya 🇮🇳🇭🇲🇬🇧🇺🇸 Renald Gallis Ann-Mary Rajanayagam 

Thanks to Harry Godber and David Lt (Lillo-Trynes) and supporters for putting together this amazing #sparkfestival . 

Gotta luv connecting with #referron who j launched on AppStore and Google play this week !

The Capital Raising process for Venture Capital

Am excited to be going on the VC journey with referron - am starting to look for a factory to make more customers happy !! 

(Shameless plug- download the app on Google Play or Appp store  - create a business card - connect by sending your vCard and making a referral and warm introduction - and track your activity - (would love your feedback:) 

 (Go to  www.referron.com.au to download and have a play - it’s free  )

  

Michael Ho focuses on 3 main milestones when describing the Capital Raising process for Venture Capital

1️⃣ Find something that works

2️⃣ Do it more often (and keep getting better)

3️⃣ Then keep finding more things that work 💪

1️⃣ Find something that works

Pre- Seed  funding - EXPERIMENTS

Find a problem worth solving  and  find a solution that’ll deliver value - not a solution that is just a vitamin - a solution that is a painkiller!!

→ this is your pre-seed use of funds

Seed funding - PROBLEM SOLUTION FIT 

You’re often left with a bunch of things that 'almost' work.

So you’re looking for a model with a set of features - that will solve that problem  that is repeatable and scalable  - that will make your customers happy! 

And now that you can prove happy customers...

you build a factory to find more happy customers

→ which is your seed use of funds

2️⃣ Do it more often (and keep getting better)

Series A - GO TO MARKET FIT

Now happy customers don't bring venture scale

So you’ll need to run different gtm experiments until you find a repeatable & scalable motion that works

→ and this will usually unlock your series A round - which will allow you to spend $10M to add $10M plus in net new (logo) revenues in less than 24 months

→ which is your series A use of funds

→ and the definition of early venture scale

Series B - SCALE MARKET FIT

Execute and stay on the venture scale path

→ which will usually unlock your series B

3️⃣ Then keep finding more things that work 💪

Series C, D E and F. - PRODUCT MARKET FIT 

You have de-risked and starting to  scale - making acquisitions to fit your customers needs 

→ which is your series B use of funds (part 2)

to get to $40M, then $80M and past $100M in revenues  to your Unicorn 🦄 

Onwards and upwards