Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Saputo ups offer for Aussie dairy

Saputo Inc. has upped its offer to buy all the remaining shares of Warrnambool Cheese and Butter Factory Co. in Australia.

A subsidiary of Montreal-based Saputo is offering A$9.05 per share cash ($9.11 Cdn at current exchange rates) which is less than the A$9.40 it paid when it took over the company in 2014.

The new offer, described as final, is available until March 6 to all shareholders regardless if they already accepted the A$8.85 per share cash bid from Jan. 30.

As of the announcement Tuesday, Saputo owned 88.11 per cent of Warrnambool's shares.


The holdouts include Japanese-owned beverage firm Kirin, owners of Lion Dairy in Australia, which owns about 10 per cent of Warrnambool's shares.