Osem-Nestle, fully owned by Nestle, has sold the land on which a Bamba factory stood for decades for NIS 19.05 million, sources inform "Globes." The three-dunam (0.75-acre) lot, which has 1,500 square meters of space, is located on Melakha Street in Holon.
The buyer is Hammer Properties and Holdings, owned by Yechiel Hammer, who holds the adjacent lot through Hammer Metals, an importer of iron and aluminum. Hammer expects to use the property in order to expand its activity, while renting out half of it to an external tenant.
Osem-Nestle's old snacks factory, built in 1964, was where Osem-Nestle manufactured Bamba, one of its strongest and most popular brands that accounts for a quarter of its snack sales. According to StoreNext's figures, Osem-Nestle's annual retail sales of Bamba total NIS 290 million.
This was Osem-Nestle's last factory in central Israel. In recent decades, the company has gradually moved all of its facilities to outlying areas, while at the same time expanding its production capacity. Osem-Nestle says it is having trouble meeting the demand, including for Bamba exports to the US. Six months ago, production was moved from the Holon plant to a new 16,000-square meter automated plant in Kiryat Gat at an investment of NIS 200 million. The new plant has 100 employees.
In recent months, Osem-Nestle completed the transfer of other production lines to the new plant, including Red Bamba and sweet popcorn, and production in Holon was completely discontinued. The move is designed to double Osem-Nestle's production capacity for both sales in Israel and exports to the US. "Our dream is for every US supermarket to offer Bamba," Osem-Nestle CEO Avi Ben Assayag said when the new plant was opened. Osem-Nestle has begun exporting Bamba to US food chains, including Trader Joe's.
The realtor in the deal is real estate consultant firm Colliers International Israel, the local representative of Colliers International, managed by CEO Ran Raviv. Colliers International has 610 branches in 69 different countries.
The current deal follows three major deals in the past year in which Osem-Nestle sold activity that was not part of its core business. The sale of the Beit Hashita pickle factory was announced last week, and Osem-Nestle signed a deal three months ago to sell its ice cream activity to ice cream giant Froneri at a price believed to be in the tens of millions of euros. As part of this deal, Osem-Nestle will sell its holdings in its ice cream subsidiary, although parent company Nestle will still own 50% of the subsidiary. The deal, which has not yet been completed, is awaiting approval by the Competition Authority. The sale is part of Nestle's worldwide consolidation of the ice cream companies operating under it around the world, while selling other ice cream companies.
Another sale by Osem-Nestle is of its money-losing sauces activity in the US. In last 2018, "Globes" reported that Osem-Nestle had sold Tribe Mediterranean Foods, its chilled salad company in the US, to Lakeview Farms.
Osem-Nestle is currently in the process of moving the Tivall plant from Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta'ot to the company's industrial complex in Kiryat Gat, which will take two years to complete.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on October 3, 2019
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