FRANKFURT, GERMANY — ECM Equity Capital Management GmbH, a Frankfurt-based investment group, has agreed to acquire German bakery chain Kamps AG from Barilla, the world’s largest producer of pasta. Kamps management team also is expected to acquire a stake in the transaction. Financial details were not disclosed.
Under terms of the transaction, Barilla will retain the company’s industrial bread unit that now generates the majority of the bakery’s sales.
Barilla in May said it was evaluating offers for the bakery chain. At the time, Guido Barilla, the company’s chairman, told Bloomberg that Kamps was not a “strategic business.”
“It’s worth a lot, and we aren’t interested in giving it away,” he added. Barilla had tried, without success, to sell Kamps a year earlier.
Kamps, which was acquired by Barilla in mid-2002, is Germany’s largest craft bakery chain with five craft bakeries and 900 locations.
Kamps would be the fifth portfolio company within ECM Equity’s GEP III portfolio. Two of the companies in GEP III are food related, including KADI AG, a Swiss-based maker of frozen foods, including French fries and snack products. Its Maredo Restaurants business is a German-based operator of steakhouses.